Theme and Variations by Merril D. Smith

Beyond my window, beyond the beyond

of timeless time, the star-birds sing

with mockingbird tenacity

sweeping beats of gleaming feather-light across a thousand nights.

We gaze without, withdrawn within

withstanding without understanding

the death all around. But light-song

finds its way from that bright beginning bang, to scatter like geese--

in honking flight, I watch them soar

reflected in the river-ripples, white on blue and grey.

When spring comes again—and it will—

there will be downy chicks, golden like the sun,

and when the darkness returns--and it will—

the star-birds will still twitter with incandescent chirps

sparking the sparkling chords of the universe

in an ever-changing refrain,

this, an eternal song.

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Merril D. Smith writes from southern New Jersey. Her poetry and short fiction have been published most recently in Anti-Heroin Review, Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, the Ekphrastic Review, and Fevers of the Mind. Twitter: @merril_mds