The thrush led me astray. He with his puffed-out speckled chest and spindly legs, his impudent beak gated open and closed in song. He that stole my love, and left me desolate, cold, and lonely in the night; that secret, eremitic bird, with his liquid, taunting morning song. From high in the cedars, he sang my love away, and me awake.
In the week after the interment, he sang to me his joy of the spring, his pride in courtship, his love of life. It came to me as mockery, as cruel jest, delight in death. And so I rose and took my borrowed shotgun out in search of peace.
…
“When Dooryards First in the Lilac Bloomed”
Lackington’s
Published 24-May-2017
About the story: If Walt Whitman had written about trans-dimensional portals.