Chorus

Chia-Chi Yu

Chorus

That rain-strewn night in the woods, the chorus, chorus

Of the green tree frogs called us

And let us by flashlight far from our firelight

Over and down a logging road to the marsh,

And they kept singing as green as the half-frozen

Hemlock branches we brushed slowly among,

As high and thin as the air we tried to hold

As breath among mountains, as thin

And clear as the ice our boots were breaking

Gently, each step a pale-green croaking

Of its own, as we came nearer and nearer where

They had risen out of cold graves to the cold

At the brittle edge of winter broken toward spring

To make their music over a cold spawning,

To choir all night after night, telling each other

We lived at the edge of summer, we live

Here again and again. As we came closer,

The singing ended, suddenly went silent

At a single pulsing throatbeat. Nothing but wind

And sleet made any sound over the marsh.

We turned our light away. We waited longer

And longer in darkness, shivering like the reeds

Beyond us, chilled as the film of ice at our feet,

Forgetting all words, and the first voice began

Again, far off, and slowly the green others

Nearby began their hesitant answers, their answers

Louder and clearer chorused around us

As if we belonged there, as if we belonged to them.

David Wagoner

 

 

 Growing up, spring evenings were full of frog noise from the pond. 

I wish I could hear it now.

 

 

Evening

Clifford Webb

Evening

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,

Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,

By dusking fields and meadows shining pale

With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,

A peevish night-hawk in the western sky

Beats up into the lucent solitudes,

Or drops with gliding wing. The stilly woods

Grow dark and deep, and gloom mysteriously.

Cool night winds creep, and whisper in mine ear.

The homely cricket gossips at my feet.

From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,

Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet

In full Pandean chorus. One by one

Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

Archibald Lampman

“Meadows shining pale with moon-tipped dandelions.”

“The stilly woods grow dark and deep…”

 I have an image of a box being passed to me with this poem inside it, a gift I can enjoy over and over again. I put it in my pocket and carry it with me wherever I go, wherever life takes me. I don’t know Lampman, and he doesn’t know me, but we share this place, this moment - and it’s beautiful.

Night Sounds

Brent Cotton

Night Sounds


And now the dark comes on, all full of chitter noise.

Birds huggermugger crowd the trees,

the air thick with their vesper cries,

and bats, snub seven-pointed kites,

skitter across the lake, swing out,

squeak, chirp, dip, and skim on skates

of air, and the fat frogs wake and prink

wide-lipped, noisy as ducks, drunk

on the bloozy black, gloating chink-chunk.



And now on the narrow beach we defend ourselves from  dark.

The cooking done, we build our firework

bright and hot and less for outlook

than for magic, and lie in our blankets

while night nickers around us. Crickets

chorus hallelujahs; paws, quiet

and quick as raindrops, play on the stones

expertly soft, run past and are gone;

fish pulse in the lake; the frogs hoarsen.



Now every voice of the hour -- the known,

the supposed, the strange,

the mindless, the witted, the never seen --

sing, thrum, impinge, and rearrange

endlessly; and debarred from sleep we wait

for the birds, importantly silent,

for the crease of first eye-licking light,

for the sun, lost long ago and sweet.

By the lake, locked black away and tight,

we lie, day creatures, overhearing night.



Maxine Kumin

“And now the dark comes on”, a change takes place, mysterious nocturnal creatures invade our once familiar daylight world.  Kumin prefaces each stage with "and now", "and now", "now". It's as if we are the audience for a performance of  the night orchestra. Under cover of darkness it sings, thrums, nickers, chirps, squeaks, prinks  - and every hour has a voice, a part in the chorus. Notice how the people build their fire "less for outlook than for magic", I love that. Isn't that what we build fires for mostly while camping, or evenings in the back yard - sure, we need warmth and food and light, but we also need magic. This poem reminds me of the drama of darkness, how it gives us mystery and music and a sense of familiar things becoming strange, of the known changing form and becoming new. Sometimes we don't recognize the wonder in front of us until we observe it from a different point of view. Sometimes we need the dark to show us what we have never seen.