In lieu of police, who shall I fear?

In search of a hope I could point to, I open my window
to hear the unseen chorus perching in the magnolia’s

verdant dress. The birding app identifies a whole choir
of gray catbirds & robins & mourning doves, cooing

through the early evening. To say their singing saves
me would be an exaggeration, but what music would

we have without their example, their flight and freedom,
their tiny miracles of breath and feathers? By all measures,

we were never supposed to exist, arriving to this world
an impossibility in a long line of things too good

to be true, too horrible to name and nevertheless
survive. What have I to fear, now that I’ve outlived

our species’ particular violences? See, now, these new
and glorious tongues we’ve fashioned for ourselves!

No need in this life for the language of our old
chains and containers. The bygone world

is a myth we have sprouted from, an allegiance
we have outgrown and abandoned. If we must

fear anything, fear the still air. A birdless blue.
Fear the moment before dawn breaks, the twilight

of a day you will only ever know once. Fear email
typos. Unsaved games. The voice you can barely place,

lilting as it told the story that once ferried you to sleep.
Was it your mother? Hers? Who dreams of you now?

When you wake, what do you remember?