A flycatcher, not a thrush. Just before dawn not a harbinger or mistress, but impossible to know in the woods of home. In Croatia, I found you on a coin, quietly staring at the Adriatic. In the Rhineland, you were climbing the scales, trilling above traffic. Elsewhere, you are drawn to the rose, celebrating yourself, and I congratulate my hearing, my invisible spirit that leans toward the darkness you dispel, where blessings begin to appear, petals shrug off their dew, lovers walk through fog, your distant appeal like Whitman’s widowed bird calling to his mate—this the melody of grief, the memory of storm, nocturnal scribble on the air, a pulse that signifies and withdraws as the sun dreams its way back into morning.
John Allman | Recycling Contents | Mudlark No. 48 (2012)