WHEN IT ENTERS
Joanne Esser
What if you woke one morning to find
you were permeable to birdsong?
You’re walking the path through birch and oak;
it enters you at first the usual way.
A single note, then a trill, then more,
patterns repeat, a new voice joins,
an arpeggio. They weave under, over,
a pause; then higher, whirr, ree,
a long caw – You notice a tingle, your skin
lit up here, there, with sparks. Bits of song seep
through your pores, begin to fill each cell.
You, surprised, absorb it like raindrops
on parched ground. Into every empty
space their music pours. And still it comes!
You try to open, make room for
such audible force, continuous now.
Can you expand and expand
big enough to hold it all?
Or will you be like glass - a jar that fills
until it cannot hold one note more -
and crack? When the loon on the lake
cries her haunting grief, will you explode?
Joanne Esser writes poetry and nonfiction in Minneapolis, MN. She has also been a teacher of young children for over thirty years. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and published a chapbook of poems, I Have Always Wanted Lightning, with Finishing Line Press in 2012.