When My Children Laugh

I thought I had heard everything
till the dark-eyed juncos, warbling
wrens and wood thrushes fell silent
as the ruby-throated leaves.

They were barely audible, soft
as bees humming over a white
froth of honeysuckles, a faint
tittering at the flaxen edge

of light. They peered into the cage
of my chest and my heart lifted
like a murmur of starlings
peppering the dove white sky.

Fluttering wings swooped and scaled
the bone rafters till tears darted
and flittered away. When night fell
in love with dark it composed songs  

beneath a theatre of stars.
The birds refused to cry or chirp,
bull headed as frogs refraining
to be moved by the howling wind.

This is what laughter is like
when hatched and fledged from a nest.
They are swallows caught like frogs
with heart-shaped lumps in their throats.