Genie MacLeod – Latent Period

after “The Song” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before, you shared the song 

with others. Placed it in 

beloved mouths — 

your mother’s, son’s, the women 

of Monday night choir practice. 

Hearts strung in a garland, 

dancing together on breath’s ecstatic breeze 

until the air was made of music.

It isn’t the nights 

but the days that have lengthened now. 

Or perhaps the empty hours themselves, 

skin of them stretched 

beyond all recognition.

You reach into your phone

for someone to sing with,

two faces close as satellite permits —

              A half-duplex system provides 

              communication in both directions, 

              but only one direction at a time, 

              not simultaneously.

Your parted voices cross

and gutter like a flame

and mocking echo makes a hocket 

of your unison.

The months go by. 

From sitting so often by the window 

you can now identify 

the jewel-bright blue jay’s 

strident jeer. Brash and grating,

it pierces spring’s canopy of sound. 

Sometimes the greater pain 

is when the balm itself 

becomes the wound.