"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