Woodcock March
Twig-stuck raindrops turn to beads.
Redwings hunch on cattail reeds.
Tuesday brings a trickling thaw;
Thursday’s leaden, cold, and raw.
In this month of flow and ebb,
hope constructs a fragile web.
While the hibernators sleep,
in the dusk you hear it: Bzeep.
Pay attention to this sound:
nasal, uttered near the ground—
sometimes close and sometimes distant—
poor as music but persistent.
Hope inspires every Bzeep:
courage crouching for a leap.
There! a flier rockets by;
another player in the sky,
tracing more by sound than sight
twittery circles in the night:
sonic carousels of woo,
chirpy wheels of ballyhoo
till at last the unseen swain
tumbles off the orbit’s plane,
falls to earth with sound effect
suggesting bird with broken neck
(random chirp of wind in tail
dropping tragically down the scale)
leveling off a few short feet
before the earth and woodcock meet.
Silence. What is the reaction?
Indifference? Extreme attraction?
Milder feelings on the spectrum?
Bzeep. The bird takes up its plectrum,
twangs the one note on its lute,
presses once again its suit.
Though the prospects don’t look brilliant,
Bzeep: the sound of hope resilient.