Song is Everywhere
“You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling...”
On Tuesday night, I stood on our island deck in complete darkness. I knew there was a sliver of moon behind the trees, and the sky was full of shimmering stars, yet I could not even make out the shape of the pond beyond the field. I stood waiting. Three weeks ago, we had been on the island; our nights so silent that I felt far removed from this world. Complete silence brings a sense of anticipation. What will break that silence? I stood there that Tuesday night, hopeful and waiting. The sound began like a quiet awakening, one frog, two frogs, and then a chorus singing loudly from our pond. The chorus faded; the next refrain floated over from the neighbour’s pond. I stood enraptured, listening to waves of frog song until they joined in a deafening crescendo.
Frogs, toads, and other amphibians are good indicators of a healthy ecosystem. This past year I have been consumed with worries about the pandemic, war, and climate change. I was also worried that the frogs would not return. We had no resident frogs last summer. Usually, I hear the odd frog during the winter months, but this year I heard nothing.
A deep sigh of relief escaped my body last Tuesday night. The males had returned to our breeding pond after waking up from their hibernation. They were once again singing. The females will take their time responding, playing hard to get and also delaying the risk of predators. So hopefully, I will enjoy this chorus for many weeks to come.
I thought I would share Mary Oliver’s poem, Pink Moon, with you, a poem about the return of the frog chorus and the pink moon. A pink moon signifies renewal, a release of things weighing us down. Maybe I should be waiting to post this until mid-April when a pink moon will grace our sky. But listening to the trilling tribes this week, I am ready to begin soothing all that is weighing on me in preparation for the birth of a new season.
Pink Moon – The Pond
You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do –
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is sparkling
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees –
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones –
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water –
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are someone else.
And that’s when it happens –
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman’s body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it betas in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.
- Mary Oliver