Having completed their evening chorus,
the songbirds are still now, nestled
in their leafy shelters, dreaming
of flight. But from the upper woods
on the slope of the south hill, a turkey
calls, its sound linking in my mind
to the call of a loon that I heard
at sunset when I was ten
and spending a week at a camp
by a lake in a Michigan woods.
I remember the temperature
and fragrance of the evening air,
the sky’s colors, the cracking bonfire,
and how we all joined hands,
and facing the sun as it melted
into the lake, sang “Taps.”
As I gaze at the sunset’s lingering colors,
the turkey calls again, and I hear
a choir of children. “All is well,”
they sing. “Safely rest.
God is nigh, God is nigh.”