Songs For Animals
A poem by Bruce McRae

Songs For Animals

The song of the owl, sung sotto voce.
Each note a vole-scented breath
in the octaves of dead certainty.

The song of the mole is difficult to catch,
one note indistinguishable from the next.
Every measure has dirt in its mouth.

Bat-song, and its buggy intonations.
Songs about dark and darkness.
That taste of moths and mayflies.

The rat lip-synching wires and woodwork.
Gnawing through the keys in its need.
A determined prince that’s always curious.

The song of the dog is a bone caught in a throat.
A top-ten whining for its master,
it sings of fox-shadow and the baited snare.

The song of the seagull, its atonal squawking.
Each cry a torn page of a newspaper.
Each call is rainfall and foulest weather.

The song coyotes sing when they sing,
every sharp a strangulated syllable,
every flat a musical of the unexpected.

Bear-song, and all its trappings.
Its woolly melodies and mammoth tunes
as sweet as a summer-fattened berry.

The wolf’s song, a mouthful of moonlight.
You hear it and fall into an unsettled sleep.
You sing it on Sunday mornings.

About the Author:

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been broadcast and performed globally.

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