The maple outside the window was alive
with birdsong, but the birds were hidden
behind the leaves so that the tree itself appeared
to be singing a loud, cacophonous song.
They rose en masse like the shadow of a cloud
with the emptiness they left calling back
to them with the fullness of where they had been, 
like the tree before this and the tree before that.
They sang ecstatically, as if it were morning,
although the sky was heavy with evening
and you could hear the silence in the sky
beyond their singing.