Voices too flyaway to echo

Poet goes walking alone, hears strange music

Photo by vuk burgic on Unsplash

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So I’ve been … not well for going on a week, and it got me thinking again about a certain time. And about the time since.

And I’m … not well — though getting better — so that’s all I’ll say for now. Except that the audio for the poem is exceptionally husky, and there are a couple of reasons for that, and I’m posting it anyway (you’re welcome), and I’ll be more chatty next week.

Love you.

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BIRD UNIVERSITY                                                                   2021


My student days were long ago
and elsewhere; I do not know
this campus, I have come here now
not for a class but for a clinic,
a crash course in resistance, a shot in the arm
to educate my body’s frail resolve —

if I can find the place. I wander paths 
through random spaces angled in between 
tall pedantic buildings, Life Science, 	
Administration, I pass the library 
and cross a green quad, feeling the absence
of student bodies, their solid urgent thrust
shouldering down sidewalks, into classrooms,
or sprawled on benches, calling to each other

across the grass. Aware, each further step I take
into this absence, that it is not empty — 
in every tree and bush, wings flick like shadows
at the edge of eyesight, voices too flyaway  
to echo off these learned looming walls
call to each other, blithe, clamorous as freshmen:

	Hey, c’mere.
	Hey, c’mere.
	Omigod I’m late.
	Omigod I’m late.
	Hey, c’mere.
	I’ll text you.
	I’ll text you.
	Omigod I’m late.
	Hey, c’mere.

Their songs flutter across the cool spring air,
follow me down the path between Creative Arts 
and Business, my thoughts now less of absence 
and more of life, of lives — some interrupted,  
some flitting past unhindered, unobserved, 
indifferent to observation. I am crossing
this campus because I love the life I have, the life
these absent students have, I hope this rumored clinic, 
once I find it, can finally inject me safe
against one cruelest interruption, can inject students
back into this campus, fill the quad again
with their no-longer-interrupted days — 
I want that, for me, for them. And yet

with every step along an empty path
through cool and singing air, I realize:
I want this too, this ancient new curriculum
of space and quiet. Do not inoculate me
against birdsong, combine it somehow 
into the cure, into the syllabus; give tenure to 
these small winged lecturers, open the windows
of all these tall pedantic buildings and listen 
as flyaway voices rise without echo 
from all the spaces angled in between. 

        I’ll text you.
	I’ll text you.
        Omigod I’m late.
	Hey, c’mere.

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