I Once Loved A Northern Mockingbird: dVerse ~ Poets Pub

Life sings to us. We don’t always hear it. Sometimes when we do, it’s too short, fleeting. We want it back. Love is the same way…

dVerse Poets Pub invites poets to wander around in words to a theme – and this week it is: a narrative poem and mockingbird.

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I Once Loved A Northern Mockingbird

I said I loved the warbling.
I even went so far
As to look up what kind of bird it was on the Internet.

And when I found out
What it was,
I ran outside to greet it.

Good morning, Northern Mockingbird!
Good morning.
Where are you? Where are you, singing to me?

There you are! In the Spruce Pine,
almost to the top.
Hi, my full-throated friend.

And then he sang again.
And again.
I read he could sing fifteen different sweet melodies.

But I swear I heard more.
I heard classical,
And rap, rock and

The buzz of jazz;
And in the late evening
As I’d come home worn from work,

He sang me delta blues.
He woke me up in country.
He moved my soul in gospel,

He warbled like a hillbilly
Foot-stepping to bluegrass,
He wore a straw hat.

He sang me love songs,
And songs about railroad heroes.
He crooned, I swear, like

Frank Sinatra.
He boogied to the swing of big bands.
Once, I heard him sing in

Barber shop quartet harmonies,
I even heard him whisper lullabies that I hadn’t heard
Since childhood.

And then he wasn’t there.
Do you know what wasn’t there is like?
I was left, deafened

By a new silence.
A discordant tinnitus.
One that plays rhapsodies

Of a soiled reality.
Cars, planes,
The whoosh of the world rushing to go nowhere.

I wish I had named him,
Because I want to be here today intoning
My own fifteen different keening refrains like,

How are you today, James?
How is your day going, Elian?
I miss you, Moe.

Sing to me.
Sing once more.
Stay a while longer, Morgan.

please.

Randy Mazie

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