I Know Who Sings

Say what you want of mermaids, mermen,
kelpies, sirens on the rocks; I know
who sings among the ice floes: marbled
murrelets, their cries skirling through the white kaleidoscope of glacial tailings; eagles calling
bell-notes; and, whistling in their
scuttering startup flight, the guillemots with their little red galoshes. From
the rocks, the early morning racketing
that mocks the dawn: the mewling colonies of murres, oystercatchers, whirring
tufted puffins. I know who makes
the music hovering in the air above
the narrow fjords and wooded islands:
fox sparrow, shy Swainson's thrush,
the varied thrush with its minor note,
some ravens clacking black percussion,
the occasional horned lark. And songs
that tremble in the dark: the deepest-hours flight of Leach's petrels, filling all
the rocking night with music and with wings.

 
by Carolyn Maddux
on board the Princeton Hall, 1995

Carolyn Maddux is a reporter for the weekly newspaper in Shelton, Washington and is completing her Master of Arts in creative writing at Antioch University's McGregor School. She teaches creative writing at Olympic College Shelton. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blue Unicorn, Rain and elsewhere, including the University of Iowa Press workshop anthology The Writing Path. She writes book reviews for Antioch Review, and her first book of poetry, Remembering Water, was published in 1996 by Bellowing Ark Press in Seattle. © 1998 Carolyn Maddux