BIRDSONG

Silken hour: a cat rattles the blinds,

thumps across your chest, bats at your eyelids.

Weaving in and out of what might be

a dream, thread of a story, tangle of

emotion, you hear the voice of someone who

once seemed unimportant whispering

“How fine you are!” The words vibrate along

your inner string, resonating strong

and clear before dissolving to birdsong:

shriek and whistle, careless click-clack of beaks,

the shaping of the empty air. You say

to your husband, quite matter-of-factly,

“I dreamed of X,” and he laughs, day begins.

Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards (2014 University of Arkansas Miller Williams prize finalist) and two chapbooks of original poetry, and she is the translator of Two Poems by Inna Kabysh (Artist’s Proof Editions). Individual poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and Subtropics.