TRILL
by Neal Klinman, March, 2021
You might not think
That a home has a trill.
But our house is on a pond-
Chandler Pond-
Right here in the city,
Tucked away in an
arm of the Nonantum Valley.
And the sky reaches down.
And the trees reach up.
And the cattails sway with the breeze
As the geese go honking
And the hawks go soaring.
Fish like to laze along the shore;
Who knows what they are doing out in the middle.
It is not very deep,
Only about six feet by some accounts,
Which we test through holes in the ice come wintertime.
Look, there lifts the heron,
Majestic in its glide.
A cormorant dives from the trunk of a submerged log.
You can catch glimpses also of foxes, raccoons, swans.
The snapping turtles are shocking, like dinosaurs.
An occasional eagle or osprey
Snatches carp from the dark waters.
And myriad birds who catch the attention of folks with binoculars.
Resident mallards soak in the orange pink sunsets with the joggers and passersby.
At night we hear the rattle of the trains down by the river
And the echoes of proverbial sirens through the city.
The rustle of the leaves
And the whines of distant engines.
But the trill-
The sound of home-
Is the familiar call of our
Red-winged blackbirds. They are with us early spring through splendid fall,
Dawn till dusk,
As they make homes of their own.
We stake claims together here in our pond-side neighborhood
As we raise our young with an eye to the seasons-
Chatting with neighbors,
Marveling at the moon,
And steadying ourselves together against the winds.
