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Dave Bonta
The field sparrow is back—
that rising trill spilling
from a small, pink beak.
A yellow-bellied sapsucker
taps a ring of wells all around
the bole of a hickory.
You nap on the porch,
ears open to the creek and other
migrant tongues.
Do you know how the dream looms? how if summer
misses one of us the two of us miss summer —
Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long
breath for the change to low contralto singing
mornings when the green corn leaves first break
through the black loam —
And another long breath for the silver soprano melody
of the moon songs in the light nights when the
earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains
lighter than a goose down —
So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the
laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory.
In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind
motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imitations
of slow sea water on the shingle silver
in the wind —