Each Morning

Dayle Olson

"Just a Little Guy" by Newman Hamper, Photography

Each morning I listen for conversations
flying high above the river,
strung together in an undulating ribbon.

The words are another language,
muscled throats favoring the downbeat,
echoing over wet slumbering fields.
 
The song is of purpose and unity,
a call and response as old as the moon 
and burnished with the scent of apples and rain.

They are discussing tender shoots
that await them 
and the constancy of stars.

They sing of the coyote at dawn
and all the places where threshed grain
carpets the stubbled ground.

Each morning, voices wash the air
with conversations about a journey beginning,
long before there is coffee in my cup.

Back

Next