How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?[Wm Blake]
As the Earth turns, molecules of air
Rise past the edge of the Earth, and are
Struck by photons. Excited, they
Release apparently random
Squeals we can hear if
We know how to listen.
Astronomers call these sounds sferics
(That’s short for atmospherics)
And call them the Dawn Chorus,
Because they sound much like
Birds calling, each to each,
As they wake with the first light
And fly off to find their daily bread.
It is always dawn somewhere on Earth.
The Dawn Chorus is always there
If we know how to listen.
An inkling might be a dot of ink.
Tolkien and Lewis and Williams called
Themselves the Inklings, reading
Their magical fantasies to each other
At Oxford, during the war.
An organist inkles when he plays
Little randon riffs and phrases before
The liturgy lets him play a melody.
We have an inkling when we have a clue,
A hint, a guess at what is really meant.
We cannot find answers unless we guess.
Random is when we cannot
See a pattern yet.
Birds are sferic inklings:
They give us a hint
Of what we may hear
When the true music begins.