The white-throated sparrow follows me –
doo, doo, doo, doo, duh, duh, doo. Beckoning.
I warble back, but no one, feathered or not,
responds to my entreaties. We make sounds
at the edge of forests, mapping the terrain of
possibility with uncertain grace – refusing to land,
unable to choose quiet. The dangers of detection
and destruction are neighbors, but silence is
certain death. To stay at the edges – to find home
between houses and hemlocks, chanting and
living, is more than a failure to thrive. It’s a
choice to inhabit the borderland between
one stand of trees and another – in the space
between all that’s known and unknown.
