Migrations

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

When skylarks sing, their soaring circling cheer

Goes up in spirals in a glistening height.

Yet where these glories reach, they disappear.

The song does not remain.  Not even slight

Reverberations then stay on.  The gloss

Of mating love completely disappears.

The vacuum* of silence fills this loss.

Male nightingales fill up their nighttime spheres

To find their lovers and to claim a space

For love and little ones.  Complexities

Of singing filled with grace

Convince their mates, remove perplexities.

  When darkness’ songs are finished, they just go

    To nothing.  Silence comes without a glow.

*The poet pronounces this as three syllables.

~ Phillip Whidden