To Keep Going

Walter Bargen

May 22, 2022

From far up the valley,

from deep in the willow thickets

along the creek, a birdcall

comes I don’t recognize.

Juan Ramón Jiménez wrote

that he would go away.

And the birds will still be

there singing.  He was right,

he went away, and some of us

still hear him singing, in

the branches beside our houses

and far up cold creeks.

But there are those birds

that have left too.  The last

dusky seaside sparrow died

in a cage behind beach dunes

in Florida, unable to call in a mate.

The shrike, the butcher-bird, Jackie

hangman, the strangler, all our names

for feathers on the same bird,

a songbird that goes against the grain

and with hooked beak breaks necks

of mice and other birds and sometimes

hangs their limp bodies on strands

of barbed wire where they dangle

like half-eaten laundry–their song

is disappearing too–along with

the meadowlark that has perched on

a fencepost in my garden and tilted its

head back, stretching its neck and exposing

a black feathered necklace as it points

its bill skyward, clearly announcing

spring, a yellow-breasted soloist

fronting an orchestra of greening

grass, it too is going away, and for

no good reason that we can understand,

and so there are fewer notes 

to remind us of his going,

to keep us listening, to keep

us going.

Walter Bargen has published 25 books of poetry including My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).