Benediction for a Listener

Benediction for a Listener

Melissa Marquez Weaver

“Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods
we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer’s day,
and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows
do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away
by the finger of God.” — Thornton Wilder

Having migrated himself from Hong Kong and Macau,
the “Birdman” Baptista stayed and stilled
and captured trills and whistles for generations
of feathered shell-thin bones made airborne.

He discovered their dialects—
which were fading and where they
huddled and how to purse his lips
to speak back their melodies.

Now, in urban areas browns and whites
and beaks have faded by nearly ninety,
casualties of oil and noise and cramped
rooms of dizzy people but

somehow, the sparrows keep singing.

The sparrows keep singing
and quiet souls with notebooks tilt their ears
and note the downturn of the voice, the tenor that betrays
flights and frozen winters, changes to strains heard for decades.

The world might still price wings
with pennies, but some eyes still hold on
to treasures, so besides the eyes of God
there’ll be witness to falling and soaring.

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Melissa Marquez Weaver
Poet & Creative

Melissa is a former English and ESL teacher. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where she cares for her husband and three young children. Her first chapbook Welcome, Stranger: Poems of Making and Keeping Our Children, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her work has appeared in The Christian Century, Bravery Magazine, Mothers Always Write, Anabaptist Witness, The Anabaptist Journal of Australia and New Zealand, and Transforming, a publication of Virginia Mennonite Missions.

Photography by Abhishek Koli