Mocking Bird Song

We sat on moonlit craggy
rock-dome; its granite face
turned outward toward
enshrouded valleys.
I felt your grief,
unspoken,
yet so real
as if a marker
stood between us.
The quiet stone sank
deep into your heart
as in a well
without an echo.

Night surrounded us
and wrapped each ponderosa pine
in silver stillness.
The shadowed wilderness
gave not a hint
of sad remembrance.
Yet I knew what images
lay close
beneath your wistful smile.
So we watched the sky
change from blue to indigo,
then black.
Twilight,
like a curtain drawn
across the mountainscaped horizons,
hid the day.
Its last, long sigh
was lost
in gray-hued past,
unreachable,
as the hard escarpment
underfoot.

What could I speak
to pierce this wall
of tears?
The lunar orb
had not an answer,
but shed
its lonesome whiteness
on your face.
The softened light
seemed here to paint
your features
with a shaded
distance,
far beyond my touch.

God, where have my words
flown off to?
Grant me speech
to meet
such sorrow.
My answer was a memory
that here I share with you.

I’ll tell a winsome story
of my far-off homeland, Tennessee.
In this fabled place,
there is a bird.
we call the mocker. He speaks not
from himself,
but in mere shadow-voices
copped from others.
Yet, as a child, I heard him clear
in early morning,
carol loud his own breathed spirit.
He did call out
with all his grace toward misty space.
There, soon, a lantern sun
would break in two,
the eastern sky.

In brighter times,
the mocker hides this other self.
Instead, he shows it
just before the dawn
with long, enchanting songful cantilenas.
Joyful, loud, in ecstasy
he greets the coming day.

Arise and sing,
my mocking bird,
sweet loved one
of this other time.
Put off your mask;
fly free
to mountain peaks.
Come laugh with me.

I’ll tie your griefs
around the wings
of my tiny mocking friend.
Yes, then I’ll tell him:

“Take my loved one’s burden
to the highest branch
of yonder Ponderosa pine.
Sing it out
above the treetops.
Bear such mourning
and transform it
into songs of life a-borning.
May this new-found voice
soar far
above the clouds,
and let its sound ring out
for all of time.”