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.
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