postal thrush

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"In the swamp,

in secluded recesses,

A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary, the thrush,
the hermit, withdrawn to himself, 
avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song."


- With a nod to the new Steven Spielberg movie 
about the sixteenth president, a line or two from 
When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d

an elegy written by Walt Whitman
shortly after the assassination of Lincoln in 1865.

A sure sign of the approaching winter in the south. 

Yesterday, when I returned home from work, 

a hermit thrush was waiting for me on my mailbox 

as though it had just arrived by postal carrier. 

He warbled no song and quickly flew away to the yard
beckoning me onward to my own secluded recess,
shy and hidden.

Seeing the dear migrant warmed my heart.

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