Whippoorwill

by W.T. Pfefferle

I am sorry for the sound of the whippoorwill.

I take back the things we said in Tucumcari.
I reset my watch to the top of each hour,
before the whippoorwill,
before the crash of glass and the sound of heartache,
before the smell of sulfur
from a building burned to the ground on Hamilton.

I am sorry that it took so long.
For the sound of that morning.
Before this. Before the sound came to us and found us,
before it nailed closed
a door once open.

Brown with a black throat,
casting its tiny shadow on leaves,
too sick to blow.
 

W.T. Pfefferle is the author of Poets on Place, The Meager Life and Modest Times of Pop Thorndale, My Coolest Shirt, and Peter Cobalt in the Weeds.