Concert

A young black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) flies over as we move through the river rookery (Pantanal, Brazil)

"...the zigzag cacophony
of a kingfisher's rattle -
here and gone -

passing into three caws
of a crow as if every sound connected
to another, or as if one sound
were making itself completely new
again and again,

even this deerfly's buzzing vibrato
one of the voices
that slide into or under
or over each other, and take place
all at once and at every moment,

though I hear it all
for no more than thirty seconds
before the self's
deafness returns."

-from "Thirty Second Concert (Orcas Island, Washington),"
by Robert Cording