Listening To The White-Throated Sparrow

three held notes
keen as a penny whistle
the fourth a shimmering tremolo
that rides the late glare of the lake

then sidles through corridors
of birch and maple
sliding over the hillside
like windblown mist

the singer so patient
that the silence that follows
swells like unfurling fists
in the hollow dens and coverts

while those four notes
stack up in that sturdy
flick of a body
and then come falling again

over these Virginia woods and spines
stalling me like a dry leaf
that stays afloat but spins and descends
the rifts of white water