Just a few steps from the house
I find a place to sit on a rock
and wait for the trill of the red wing blackbird.
I have waited twenty years to hear it here
in my back yard full of water and willows
and quiet. All day, though intermittent, I’ve heard it.
Funny how much I enjoy the waiting tonight—
perhaps because I know that eventually
the bright call will come. It is, perhaps, like a girl,
waiting through her first date for her first kiss—
she’s pretty sure it will happen, and now, after
years of waiting, she suddenly has
all the time in the world. In fact, the waiting
is delicious—like champagne, dry, with tiny bubbles.
Like summer’s first raspberries—a little too tart,
and yet sweet enough to eat another and another.
I sit in the goldening world and wait and wait.
I listen to the jays as they squawk and the warbler’s
sharp chirp. The wind teases my hair and I wait
until I forget I am waiting, simply noticing the world.
By the time I hear the familiar trill, it greets me
like the old friend it is, then it’s silent again.
The way the sun seems most lovely just before it’s gone,
that’s how the silence holds me.
