“NIGHTJAR” by Deborah L. Mattila

Sue Johnson, Chuck Will’s Widow on a Metamorphic Rock, 1997, etching on paper. Purchase made possible by the Gignilliat Fund for Acquisitions, 2009.  Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, founded as Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

after Sue Johnson’s Chuck Will’s Widow on a Metamorphic Rock 

The nightjar stirs in coppiced wood
as dusk obscures its feathered flight,
concealed by day upon the ground,
uplifted on the wings of night.

In swirls of silence overhead,
its shadowed form in bas relief,
the nightjar glides the daylight’s ebb
then sweeps into a dark motif

of moonlit wonder. Silhouettes
eclipsed by day stand etched against
a starlit sky, dark minarets
of leaf and limb from which commence

the nightjar’s cry. I hear the trills
from branch and bough, and feel the breath
of passing wing as evening chills
the woodland flora, lowland heath.

Deborah L. Mattila resides in the Washington DC metro area. She is currently pursuing an MA in Writing with a concentration in poetry at Johns Hopkins University.