by Anne Yarbrough

 

hidden       in magnolia        floated

a note

out of reach      above the street—

I could not jump
     to touch it.

The bird waited at note’s end.

I was running toward the waiting.

It was summer’s end,
when birds fall silent.

Behind me a bird          answered.

Air bent      overhead
as I ran along the street,

not understanding     their tongue.

Anne Yarbrough’s first collection, Refinery (Broadkill River Press), received the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, CALYX Journal, SWWIM Every Day, Cider Press Review, Spillway Magazine, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Rust + Moth, The Inflectionist Review, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for Four Way Books’ Levis Prize and twice for the Orison Prize. She lives along the lower Delaware River.