The Summer Tanagers

live deep within the timber.
At dusk, they call to each other
warbling to welcome the night.
 
If you stand silently near the timber’s edge
you might see one:
 
a blood-orange jewel lying in the hollow
just at the base of summer’s throat.
 
Or you might follow their love songs into the tree tops—
blinking and refocusing,
scanning and rescanning,
 
to no avail.
 
Perhaps another time
when the sun is just beginning to set
and the last light floods a pocket in the upper story
where a single tanager sits.
 
Perhaps a moment when you forget
to try, when you simply look up
and there, on the limb of a young linden,
a summer tanager sits.
 
Or perhaps a dream
in which your lover calls to you,
his heart a blood-orange beacon
in the dark.