"The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out."
Robert Frost
I remember the summer nights of the whippoorwill. The hottest, most airless nights, when the world outside seemed to be holding it’s breath, so little movement in the humid, tropical heaviness. No stir or spin to the leaves outside my window, just a thickness that made me feel as though a breath was an arduous pull through a long straw.
Sleep never came easy on these nights. In an old farmhouse, air conditioning meant opening the cellar door for the coolness of it’s depths, and hopefully nothing else unwanted, like snakes or large cellar spiders. I would toss and reposition myself to the coolest part of the sheets and yearn for that elusive spin of the mind that signals the prelude to sweet slumber.
And just when that little glimpse of mind wandering would tease with hope, a faraway song would travel from the edge of the world and wind it’s way into my consciousness. A pretty song when heard once or twice, but over and over the notes would be sung until it felt like a brainwashing, and even when it ceased for a moment, my mind, traitorously, would fill in the pattern until it started up again.
Slowly it would travel ever near, from woods to meadow to just beneath my window. What drew these souls to serenade our farmhouse on those sleepless nights? Why sit beneath my window sill and carry on so close and loud that they may as well have been under my pillow.
Such a haunting, frustrating song… and all I could do was pray for intermission.
But now, how I mourn the loss of the whippoorwill. It has become an elusive memory and nostalgic echo of my childhood summers. It is a strange thing to miss the torment of that incessant chorus but the long, hot summer nights seem strangely incomplete now and the silent spaces at two am remind me of their absence. It is a sound of summer that has disappeared, though the remnants of the refrain ring beautiful in my mind.
Listen… you said into the phone
What’s this sound?
As you opened and closed the screen door
Reaching wide
Like muscles stretching
Squeaking in a voice that’s rusted
Snapping shut
The waking up
Of a door unused
Three seasons long
What’s more summery
Than that, you asked
And I answered with a poem
And what’s more summery than…
A June bug knocking
Over and again
With all his vim
Against the screen door
Trying to buzz in
And whizzing wing of dragonfly
In spirals of afternoon July
And crickets
Filling August cracks
With music of a lower sun
Farewell in your hello, I hear
Portending Autumn ever near
And where’s the quintessential bird
My childhood summer friend
The whippoorwill that travelled late
To call at two am
And sit beneath the summer moon
And croon of summer’s end
And what’s the sound of fleeting days
The flocks of swifts are counting down
A crystal chime of glasses raised
To orchestras
Of summer sound
Sara Mathews - September 2015
