Your Song
English poem by: Athol WilliamsTheme: Hope
Woken by singing in our garden I pressed
my face to our frosted bedroom window.
Wave upon glorious wave of sweet melody
danced from tree to tree and floated across
the lawns and flowerbeds to pour warm honey
over my heart. Though the sky held firmly
onto grey gloom, and the leaves hid deeply
in their brown branches, the singing sprouted
a fountain of sparkling light and bright colours
outside our window. There, below, on the grass,
among the gladioli and strelitzias you’d planted,
I saw a small blue swallow overflowing in song.
“Why are you singing such beautiful notes?”
I asked the bird, poking my head out into the day.
“This is how I hold the memory of loved ones
close by,” it solemnly replied. "This is how
I keep them living – I sing their song.”
Suddenly, what was upside down, flipped
the right way up; what was cracked, mended;
and what was bent over stood upright, tall.
I closed the window and went back to sleep.
When I woke, the sun was up and the trees
were a river of leaves, and I was whistling
your song... as I’ve been doing ever since.