Bird Song

My mother said, Don’t listen

to the bird singing in a kind of murmur.

You know – the one that sounds half asleep.

No matter when in the day it sings,

that’s the bird of twilight and dawn.

It’ll slow you down. 

Listen instead to the reach-reaches,

the git-git-gits,

the good-to-BE-heres. 

Get going, or you’ll spend your life

between times.

Of course I didn’t listen

to her.  All my life I’ve heard

that one bird,

and I’ve been half asleep,

half awake,

a little melancholy,

never entirely in love

with the sun.

Charlotte Muse