Port of Call

I don't know where
I learned 
the chickadee song.
I assume
my mother,
her soprano
guileless and 
ambient,
freed for a space
from the tuckered-out
startle of '50s huswifery,
cooed the sweet monotony
until there was always
a reliable incessancy
of none,
the last little bird
finally flown. 
So out of the sticks and bones and ash
of my untended memory
the tiny chicks
bud again,
flitting and soaring
away and away
off old-growth vine and gate and door,
aloft on the lilt
of my seasoned 
soprano
into the climax
of none 
once more.