Wake
An hour before dawn, voices drift down through the fog like the first & most perfect snow crystals of the year.
I picture fast moving shadows against the stars, snow disappearing into dark water, a far-off tundra where the night goes on for months.
I lean out over the porch rail. The creek runs high from all the recent rains. Two weeks later I’m still hearing the last treble notes.
A couple of weeks ago I was sitting out on my porch at quarter till five in the morning, still warm from my shower, when a flock of tundra swans went over – the only swans any of us heard all autumn. After last spring’s glorious northward migration, it was a bit of a disappointment. What I heard might well have been simply the last flock in a nightlong caravan. Steering by the stars as they do, the swans would’ve had to fly high to clear the clouds that had settled in around us. With the stream so loud and my windows all shut, I wouldn’t have heard anything. Or perhaps the muffling effect of the fog made them sound higher and farther away than they were? In any case, I remember the auditory wake that followed their passage.