1. NIGHTINGALE
In my dream a bird tweets lingeringly
Tweets like a plaintive chick
Just fresh from the egg
Then its voice soars to an ululating trill
Sweet and high
Higher until it becomes as penetrative
As a triumphant celesta
Alarmed
Yet elevated into a curious state of rapture
I awake and its song is no dream
I tiptoe to the window where I hear
A tiny flutter of wings
As I look up
To the starry plough in the medieval blue
Tomorrow
In the early dawn
I will spot from this window
Cupped beneath
The umbrella of a fine-leafed shrub
A small brown bird
Sleeping

2. Is this the source of that cathedral of sound?
Tomorrow night I won’t hear it at all
Yet forever it will haunt my recall