How To Explain The Birds That Sing At 3 A.M.
by Daniel Hales
There’s a book in the next room that will tell their names, parse these notes, this sequence. On another shelf, none of this exists.
A sentry in a distant outpost listens, reports into his broken transmitter
“the clarity of their polyphony… the most precise measure of… that exists…
the fluidity of each arpeggio… the rate of a warble’s latency…
the depth at which a trill dissolves into its own reverb…”
* * *
They are conducting market research
Programming would not be possible without the underwriter’s support
Nature’s finest nesting adhesive
Worms sweet as hummingbird nectar
They have found their nest on Google Earth
They are calling everyone over to see
They are sending friend requests to you and me
* * *
I faintly hover, rehearsing the details of a favorite flying dream, trying to initiate myself into its secret society. It’s what I clothe my insomnia in.
* * *
A young robin asking questions
do mouses grow up to be rats
Parents mumble under their wings
He asks again
Daniel Hales has had poems, flash fictions, and creative nonfiction published in many print and online journals, including Verse Daily, The Massachusetts Review, Conduit, Quarter After Eight, Upstreet, Bateau, H_NGM_N, and previously in qarrtsiluni. He’s the songwriter, singer, and guitarist for Daniel hales, and the frost heaves.
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