Stillness at Birdcall

Ornithology in a World of Flux
by Robert Penn Warren, from The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren

It was only a bird call at evening,
unidentified,
As I came from the spring with water,
Across the rocky back-pasture;
But I stood so still sky above was
not stiller than sky in pale-water.
Years past, all places and faces
fade, some people have died,
And I stand in a far land, the evening
still, and am at last sure
That I miss more that stillness at
birdcall than some things that
were to fail later.

[Thanks Rebecca Bradshaw!]