Morning Song Poem by William L Roberts

I woke in the early morning
To hear a bird singing,
Solitary, outside our window,
The only sound in the world.
The eastern sky was still dark,
There was an hour yet before dawn.
I felt the distilled joy
One feels on hearing a favorite song.

Was it singing to attract a mate?
To threaten a neighbor?
What, I wondered, was the song to it?
Was it just some early morning chore?
Was it perhaps a bird on a bender?
Drunk on fermented berries?
Too high to fly home
Without risking a ticket?

Soon we'd have to rise
Get the kids on the bus -
To read poems about Nightingales,
To learn about animal territories,
And of course we had to get to work ourselves.

I wondered of a sudden,
If observed at some remove,
By some greater being,
If each of our daily activities
Might have something of the beauties
Of that bird's morning song?

'Jeeze, look at the time, ' you complained,
When I roused you with the question.
Then a grim, 'I doubt it, ' when I'd explained.