Concertare

Are we singing or striving?
The wood birds demand to know.

Frogs and crickets contending
Ask the same thing in reverse.

Each chorus raising its own
Ruckus harmony requires

From uncounted hungry throats,
From uncounted rasping wings,

The desperate signaling
Every intention to win

Over the undecided,
However underhanded

The means, the mode of combat
Barely distinguishable

From the possessors' duets
In the middle of their dreams.

It's a contest. It's a hymn.
It's the voice of a forest

That has no voice of its own
Except the wandering wind

Condescends to give the leaves.
At least the creatures singing,

Whatever their forever
Unknowable intentions

To them, create together
A thing that is not beyond

The things their private longings
Need. The leaves and needles

Stand the wind as the grazing
Of the unvoiced butterflies

In their uncontested youth.
Their music is nothing to them.