☀ What Sparks Poetry: Jessica Fisher on "Night Song"

You'll never know
what became of me
in the dark, how
my body opened, to
what or to whom.
There, the moon
shone with the sun’s
reflected light
and the stars, hidden
by day, blinked their
shy hellos. The long
days of summer, with
its great foliage, its
flocks and herds,
had erased the desire
to be a self alone.
Sometimes on the bus
I felt like a stowaway
in other lives,
looking into the soul
of each passenger.
How, you ask? given that
the soul, if it exists,
cannot be seen, is
like the bird hidden
in the bush, the
air you breathe. You
take it in nevertheless.
I studied their hands,
the laborers headed home,
kids on their way
out for the night. Beneath
the skin, the riverways
that lead to the heart.
I caught their eyes,
held them there awhile.
There was no one
I could not love.
When the wind clattered
through the oak trees,
and the last milkweed
seeds clung to the
wire screen, and the
crickets sang their wild
song at nightfall, I
thought everything was
saying goodbye, that I
should listen more closely.
I wanted to throw
the window open
to that cold, take in
whatever was left outside.
The leaves of the aspen
already so few, though
they are not lonely,
and in the ravine
a net stretched wide
to catch the saw-whet
owls in their migration.
There in the moonlight
I saw one shining,
lured to the snare
by its own call
played back. Later,
under black light, I felt
the rapid heart beating
in my hands, spread
a wing to tell its age,
the dun feathers fluorescing
the color of sunrise
or sunset, the breast
soft as milkweed tufts.
Weighed and banded and
then let go, it flew back
into its anonymous life.
It had survived capture,
was ready to hunt.
The night was dark
as the future, and
very cold. It drove
us inside, but something
stayed with us of
that strange kind,
their eyes like citrine,
their few ounces
nonetheless weight enough
to hold a heart.