Long past midnight, carrying through
My screens, it cries for its mate.
I hear with it the answer of silence.
It calls again, and again.
I wonder what it has learned
Of desire and loss, this ancient
Bird that wishes only to be safe
In love from hunger.
A prayer is also a lament,
It seems. It cries once more,
And I can see the red moon
In its eye as it floats beside the reeds.
The echo of nothing, drifting.
This poem first appeared in Geauga Park System Nature Writing Anthology (2021).
—
David Adams is a poet living in Burton, Ohio. He has been a laborer, academic and technical writer. Hope As a Construction, his 11th collection of poems, was published by Bottom Dog Press in 2023. His prose memoir, Casual Labor, was published by Blue Shale Books in 2021. David collaborated with the composer Dawn Sonntag to complete Clara: A Life and Death in Shadow, an opera in three acts about Clara Haber.
