In the distance someone is singing.
	Pablo Neruda; tr. W. S. Merwin

Someone is always singing, especially at
night in farmlands when the drone of the day
mutes, or in sleeping suburban neighborhoods
when a barking dog breaks the silence.

The wind plays a part, stirring summer laden
branches to whisper together, or rain to clatter
against our windows, its song a sustained chant       
against drought, promising even more green.

This morning along the border of the local park,
the mallows have opened their mouths to sing
pink, fuchsia and white, their dark eyes focused
on the sun, faces nodding in the light breeze.

And someone is singing the blues from the din
of cities—distant singers unknown even to one
another. We must also heed the dissonant songs
from those sleepless neon streets.

What space separates us from someone singing?
What expanse must we traverse to find the singer
hidden among forgotten reeds, the one who dares
to try to translate the eddies of rivers between us?

How far away are those who need our love, their
distant songs wanting answer, reaching out to us
at dusk and dawn, echoing our own loneliness—
faintly calling for our antiphonal response?

As I pull in, I notice in the car next to
mine a barking white poodle, and I worry
about him in the heat, then note the dog’s
owners have left the car’s air-conditioning                
on while they harvest the many bins.

This farmer grows it all on his own fields
which stretch out behind this elongated shed—
acres of corn, tomatoes, green beans, cabbage,
cucumbers, basil, peppers, and more—his
tables overflowing with succulent summer.

And at the end of the wooden stands, bakery
shelves behind glass display muffin-tops,
fresh blueberry pies, turnovers. I succumb to
a cranberry-orange muffin-top, plan to eat it                
in the car before I even get home.

It’s a surreal scene, rows of masked people
wandering up and down the aisles, served
by masked teenagers toting up the costs
with a pencil on a little pad. No high-tech
here except for the charge-card skimmer.

Suddenly it’s August, and we have plunged
into the dog-days—not named as I thought for
the days overheated dogs lie around panting on
lawns or driveways, but rooted in the ancient
Greek beliefs about Sirius rising in the  heavens.

Fever, disaster, lethargy, inactivity, or indolence—
yes, all of these are with us this pandemic summer,
yet home now, I unload my fresh corn, green beans,
Jersey tomatoes, and cucumbers, and rejoice as I
shuck my two young ears of sweet white corn.

Yesterday I met some unknown flowers blooming
along the foundation of the neighboring condo—
the former home of an old woman who died some
years ago. I’d never noticed them before, though I’ve
lived here a decade, never witnessed their blossoms.

Like an aging nature spirit, a woodland wise-woman,
my neighbor tended her garden as if each species were
her child. She even rescued the tiny, failing rosebush
given to me when my husband died, found for it the
fertile, sunny corner where it thrived.

She planted her flowers, and they endure though she
is gone into a wicker casket strewn with roses, given
a green burial bordering the woods. Yesterday, I could
not name those pink and white pitchers, but today
I find them in a photograph, name them calla lilies.

Before the naming, seeing. Before the seeing, pausing
long enough to be there, to slowly approach whatever
is calling you into its family, and then to listen for what
it has to tell you—perhaps a name it has given itself,
or the name it has chosen for you.