Do we hide where nothing pierces the carapace of experience, or stand naked to the savage thrusts of everything all the time?
There’s a songbird singing. It has done since before light. There were others, who joined, but they have now quietened or flown off to sing elsewhere. All that remains is this single triller who, if they were human, would surely be a virtuoso on piano or singer of reknown for the song it sings is the same, but with never ending variations. The notes dip and climb and soar, and hold steady.
Briefly, occasionally, the song stops and I wonder, brave songbird, if you feel the weight of call without response, whether these small pauses are you gathering your fortitude to carry on.
Is there an inner void birds stare into, a darkness which growls back, but is soothed, appeased, or beaten back down by unceasing song. Or maybe there is no avian void, no slough of despond, or pit of despair, no black dog howling on darkened moor.
Perhaps there is only the constant search for a respondent and then, well, what eggs may hatch will hatch.
Poem by stuartcturnbull, picture from JonPauling on Pixabay
This poem is one written over the summer. It is part of a suite of poems that considers UK history and life from roughly the end of the Second World War through to an unknown future.
The suite's title is from the opening line of the fourth stanza in William Blake's 1808 poem Jerusalem.