Night Bird Poem by David McLansky

Nightly she sings
This bird of fire
Deep within the park,
Her warbled song
Of fierce desire
A spark within the dark;
A song of urgent majesty
The lilt of coming tragedy;
Nightly she sings
Her heart exposed
As if her breast
Had burst enclosed;
Her song a clarion in the night
That breaks upon the coming light;
So mad and wicked in her passion,
Her honesty, odd, and out of fashion;
It pierces hearts grown hard with age,
The barred look upward in their cage;
This howling music of the senses
Indifferent to its consequences,
Stirs the weary mind to wake
Condemning sleep, to still, partake.