Something That Spoke

by Carol Grametbauer

I paused this morning
on my way to the bird feeder,
just after dawn,

coffee can of sunflower seed
and millet in hand, arrested
by something that spoke
to something inside me.

It might have been the stillness,
the way every leaf on the spicebush
hung motionless; might have been

the mesh of fog weaving itself
into the trees; might have been
the faint chirps of a field cricket
from its weedy hideaway.

It might have been something
ancient and other, unknowable.
Something spoke, and something

inside me answered,
and I understood none of it,
but stood in the grass by the feeder
motionless as leaves, and waited.

CAROL GRAMETBAUER is the author of two chapbooks, Homeplace (Main Street Rag, 2018) and Now & Then (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in journals including Appalachian Heritage, Connecticut River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and in a number of anthologies.

Photo: “Fog Tree” by Nikos Koutoulas