MEADOWLARK
            David Wagoner
                p. 2005
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You may be walking on the edge of a road,
Humming a song from the hit parade of your youth
When you believed what you sang, when everything
You believed in had to be some kind of singing.

A bird may surprise you then with a song somewehere
Above or behind you, maybe just ahead--
The three directions you'd almost given up on,
Places you thought might have no songs at all.

If you stop to find the source, maybe you'll see
A yellow-and-black bibbed singer perched on a post
Or on barbed wire, staking his claim on a muddle
If worthless weeds and grass by uttering,

As if with two tongues, his plaintive minor duet
From two of his throats, one of them nearly yours,
Now bursting open like a pair of sunflowers
Under the sun, even as you stand there.


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