we knock upon silence

for an answering music

      Lu Chi

Not yet dawn, the crickets quiet now

After another long night of love songs,

The wind quiet too in the dark maple

Where a wren no bigger than a leaf

Lifts from limb to higher limb to wait

For the light, the few notes it knows

All it will need to fill the tree and then

The whole of this morning with its song,

But now there is nothing to do but enter

Into the anticipation of what is to come,

How this moment of silence too is a song.