Judith A. Brice: Mourning Calls

From beyond the brume,

beyond the horizon, she swims,

the mallard’s mate,

a wail

for a call, brief before the wait

for her next plaint, shortened and hoarse

From around the cove she floats

into the evening lake, as its restive waves

batter the reeds, tawny and coarse

among the gray, the wind-tossed rocks.

She keens, still mourning—

pleads

Out into the wind she drifts,

her westward whines without hope,

amidst the singe of twilight,

a solitary

slipping of sun, singing

its own vast and disappearing song

Note: This poem was set to music by a Michigan composer, Tony Manfredonia, and then performed by a quintet plus voice by Pittsburgh’s Tuesday Musical Club. Click here to listen to the performance.
 
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Copyright 2016 Judith Brice. First published in Versewrights. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Judith Brice is a retired Pittsburgh psychiatrist. She is the author of two collections of poems: Renditions in a Palette and Overhead from Longing.