Our neighbor’s geriatric rock band has packed up. It’s late in the day, but it’s summer and there’s still plenty of light up ahead. The afternoon pause in activity is packaged in silence, ringing louder in the wake of the Jefferson Airplane. A young, cheeky squirrel attacks the suet, but is easily, if momentarily, discouraged. There are millions and billions and jillions of tiny cedar cones covering the warming ground. I hear an eagle’s high-pitched voice. The only other sound’s the sweep of my broom clearing the flagstone path.

Swainson’s thrush —
its song spirals up
somewhere else