When Night is the Mother of Wisdom 2

Long before first light, a magpie

wakes me. A contralto, her song

is a rippling run of notes.

She pauses, then repeats a plaintive,

yet determined

melody which carries her sweet sorrow

into my waking and my sleeping,

until I can no longer tell one

from the other. Perhaps another

bird will answer. I strain,

but hear nothing, only the night in

its vastness,

and a sense that darkness grants her

pre-eminence. She sings

for the rocks in the long arc

of their listening, for trees in their

standing, for the animals

and birds; she's an emissary for all

that's sentient

and more than human. Dawn breaks

and her song ebbs till spent.

Suspended in reverie,

I remember how half way through

last nesting season,

the magpies—whose range reaches

round my home—

lost their place, a penthouse apartment

in the Norfolk pine next door.

This tree—grandest

in the district—was felled, rendered

like a whale on the deck

of a factory ship. The stump grinding

done, and the men

gone, the magpies took it in turns

to pick over the fragments

of tree that lay scattered

across broken ground. Bound by

their solemn tone, and by neighbourly

allegiance, I stayed to share in our loss.

As darkness settled

around us, I dared to hope, that I,

this long lapsed member

of the family, might learn to live as I dream.