Midlife

December, 51.54 degrees North, 6.45pm, and a bird is singing in the dark.

Somewhere in the three hour deep night another returns the call.

I don't know if it's swallow or chiff chaff or tit

But something in my spine knows it is a warm-weather sound,

And fuddled, I look up into spindle branches and think to call my mother.

It is for the birds, I tell myself, she would like to hear about the birds,

But I know that talk would turn towards the root of my confoundity

And I have no more energy to talk about the children,

To chatter like the anachronistic birds in the branches,

To feel the splayed weight of heavy boughs pulling me apart,

While the suckling roots tether me in place.

I remain, search again for the bird who should not be here,

Cannot see it against the funereal sky, a pall for bare branches.

The leaves are gone, papery gold now segueing into mud,

Into nitrogen and potassium and phosphorus,

Into another inch of wood, creeping towards the heavens,

Suppleness giving way to strength,

Strength giving in to brittle redundancy,

And somewhere, up there, the birds sing songs a season out of time,

While I stand still upon surfacing roots and try not to weigh too much.