Act Two

Now I have found two of you
Or at least you have shown yourselves…
Like in the second act of a play or pageant
Acted out in the hot days of summer.
And the second act is full of dialog:
A discussion back and forth
A call and response chorus
Of an operetta,
For I hear the music
But do not speak the language.
But by the staging and the costuming I can infer
That perhaps you are parent and child
In the throes of avian adolescents
Working out the final solution whereby wings
Flap and you separate
Both greater for it?
Or maybe you are siblings and squabbling
Over turf or food or the keys to the coming kingdom?
Pleasantly distracted by the drama,
I am keeping my ears keen and my eyes
To the sky.

Calls and Tokens

It is tomato season.
Vines are pendulous with fruit
Colored like the margin of a rosy sunrise
Crowning above a forest canopy.
It is an expectant time.
Overhead you continue to call out.
-It has been several weeks now-
You give out a two note crescendo
A half-step up
Sounding like it is issued from a rusty slide-whistle,
A squeaky garden gate,
Not songful
Just barely an exhale.
Who do you seek?
And what do you want?
You are young perhaps
Needing to let go, but fledged forlorn,
Willfully abandoned and sent on your way…
You glide across a sky light
And then perch, showing yourself.
I raise my hands full of tomatoes
And offer them in a fruitless gesture:
I am with you
But I cannot come to your aid.