The brown warbler's song burbles,
curving into this room where
I hide from the heat.
It flutes like a gurgling stream
through the screen
on the honeysuckle breeze
and carries me along to long ago,
up on the mountain where I sat
cracking pinon nuts,
counting steeples and smokestacks
in the city below.
I wondered what caused
clouds and what to make
of the swift slip of hours.
The brown warbler's song
trilled from a clover field
where Grandpa in overalls
and a cheek full of tobacco
stooped and tried to teach me
how to swing a scythe,
where Stranger the dog,
wearied by faster jackrabbits,
slept nearby in the dust.
Today I see the warping wood
of the haybarn and the green
John Deere tractor with cobwebs
whiffling in its wheels.
The bird's song carries
the buzz of bothering flies
and Black Angus cows across
the road flicking their tails.
These cows always know just when
to graze and when to slog
home to the barn.
Oh, there are other birds:
swallowtails trying to nest on
our porch, hummingbirds
flitting around the red
sugar water feeders,
Carolina wrens
dressed like squat brown
friars caring neither to
spin nor reap, jays
in bully-blue screeching
and taunting, robins peeping
night into day.
But only the brown warbler
trills a watery song
from summers gone to ghosts.
Only the brown warbler
can lump a song with the ripples
of times I let leave, to haunt me
in the shadow of my room.
--Jo VonBargen 2011
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