Dawn Symphony On A Spring Morning Poem by Diana van den Berg

I strain my ears,
greedy
for each delicate note,
for each pianissimo dolce espressivo trill,
spilling on to slowly gilding branches
and spreading through the celebration
of greens and browns and greys
with morning blue
selectively filtering through
one or two patterned, celestial windows
and many dazzling, ceiling peepholes.

Avidly I savour each phrase of the spontaneous symphony -
an extravaganza,
praising the glory of the new day’s dawning -
and I welcome
the soft canine injunctions
from far off furry throats
and an impromptu crescendo moderato of railroad clicketty-clicks
that fades into the distant highway swoosh of tyres
and engines’ low, low rumble -

for all this
enhances the counterpoint of the little musicians
bursting beauty
into forest foreground.

As my hearing heightens,
the tentative morning litany of waking crickets swells the 3-D outpouring.

Symphonic movement blends into the next
and I lose myself
in every perfect tone and semi-tone,
in the sunshine-and-shadow flow from note to note,
in the echoes, the contrasts, the ebb and
flow of choral twitters,
the sparkling solos blossoming from quiet corners -

and my anxiety-rigid shoulders dropp -
and the closing cadence of the dawn chorus
seeps
deep
into the marrow
of my bones
as I absorb
the first inflections
of the next musical offering -
a gentle madrigal in honour of
the full-blown day.

(27 September 2000)