The Songbirds Poem by Mira Midha

What is it that woke me this summer morn?
That subdued tint of ray
As it plays the sky
Still shy?
Nay… that sleepy, muted tint of blue
Is just a subtle story
Of the exuberant morning
Revealing its morning glory?
Detached, I had become
From the poetry of sound,
Only hearing a disharmony
Of a commotion all around.

But what about music the world forgot,
Of birds that hide between scarlet branches in shade?
Today it played….
I heard it again this dawn
As it sung in a teasing banter
An ensemble, a symphony of songs,
With a koel taking the lead,
In a cheeky repartee, back and forth,
Rending the air to resonate,
A rising pitch wistfully calling for rain or maybe
It's mate.
While I owned this space for a while,
There was a strain of another melody,
In a style
Of a lyrical parley, a songbird
Lilting, to catch a tune,
Throwing a challenge, it seems,
To the other birds rousing,
As the bashful sky
Suddenly comes alive with beams,
Silently winking through lacey leaves
And my heart takes a heave…….
How had I gone to this other world
Lost in a time,
Tied in discordant knots,
That had now ceased to rhyme,
Thinking there can be no other story but mine,
If only we would pause and listen,
Everything has a story to tell
And conflicting jangle on another day,
Would have jarred my mind in sounds of dismay
Of a city coming to life
In an incompatible noise of strident sour notes,
And a mind would have wondered……is there hope,
For I had forgotten that in this confusion,
There is a fusion
Of an opera that emanates from around and the bough,
And trees shake with songbirds elation singing now
Of communes and paradises that makes us whole,
Of a bird song's immortal soul.