According to Folklore, a Long-Missed Friend Will Return

Notes from November 7, 2017.
A yellow jacket flying around the hood of my car and a bird singing I can't identify, but it's familiar, I haven't heard it since my childhood. I can smell wet gravel on the driveway and hear it crunching underfoot as I walk to end of it where I'll wait for the bus. I hear that bird song from somewhere in the oak scrub across the street. This morning that sound is visceral, it literally throws me back in time. A lump in my throat forms for a childhood a long ways behind me and my long gone mother who I miss so much.

April, 2019. The bird singing in 2017 was a chickadee.



According to Folklore, a Long-Missed Friend Will Return

The chickadee

calls out to me

with my mother’s

voice. She says,

“Mi-key! Mi-key!”

Calling me to her

where she stands

at the sink

in front of the

kitchen window,

where one time she

could have reached

out and touched

the backs of white-

tailed deer as

they bounded through

the backyard and

leapt in one motion

over the pond

where I crouch now,

toes dangling

precariously

over the wet bank.

I back away,

careful not to slip

into the duckweed,

and run to her voice.

But she is not

there, not there

at all, and I’m a

man in the middle

of my lawn,

facing the woods

behind my house

where in that vernal

shade the chickadee

sings its bright,

beckoning song.   

By Michael Kocinski

3/31/2019