Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

I’m woken in by a figure, he grabs my arm. “It’s coming,” he says, and my eyes are wide open and I run after him, into the cool night air.

When I step outside the figure has vanished. But I am not alone. There are others out here too; in the dark my eyes make out the form of others; neighbors standing in their wet grass front lawns or in the cracked dark of the sidewalks. We see each other but we do not wave or call out. We just stand together.

I close my eyes to breathe in the taste of midnight and when I open my eyes it’s so dark I don’t notice. It will start soon. The air hums with our waiting.

It comes softly at first, keening, gentle, whisper cries.

The song of a sparrow, or a curling mist silver sunrise.

Louder, it sends shivers down the spines. Of those of us who left our beds and answered the call. The sky flutters with black feathers and urgent songs. The clouds roil, revealing a dim and unearthly moon.

Louder. Stronger. Desperate and beautiful and new.

My smile breaks out, I feel the rush of nighttime beauty. The song has not so much broken the silence as enriched it, given embodiment to what was unsaid.

I thank the breeze and the clouds and the dark, and the blackbird, and one by one we slip back to bed.