A kind of heaven,
this clamor, a lulliloo:
“to shout joyously,
to welcome with cries,

from a cry of joy among
some African peoples”:
Webster’s New International,
1934, a foot-thick volume

deftly marble
as this patch of marsh.
Today I require the term
and there it is—these definitions

wait to be lived,
actual as these frogs,
who chorus as if
there’s no tomorrow,

or else they’ve all
the time in the world.
We ruin the rain,
they go right on,

this year. Hard to imagine
the eagerness of a body
which pours itself
into this—forms

you have to take on faith,
since all they seem
to be is chiming Morse
belling out long-short

over the parched tarmac
of the runway. I never till now
needed the word lulliloo.
How do you reckon your little music?