Visitation

Walking past the open window, she is surprised by the song of the white-throated sparrow and stops to listen. She has been thinking of the dead ones she loves—her father who lived over a century, and her oldest son, suddenly gone at forty-seven—and she can't help thinking she has called them back, that they are calling her in the voices of these birds passing through Ohio on their spring migration. . . because, after years of summers in upstate New York, the white-throat has become something like the family bird. Her father used to stop whatever he was doing and point out its clear, whistling song. She hears it again: "Poor Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody." She tries not to think, "Poor Andy," but she has already thought it, and now she is weeping. But then she hears another, so clear, it's as if the bird were in the room with her, or in her head, telling her that everything will be all right. She cannot see them from her second-story window— they are hidden in the new leaves of the old maple, or behind the white blossoms of the dogwood— but she stands and listens, knowing they will stay for only a few days before moving on.