Joanna Gilman Hyde

The Hawk Queen Bed 8:57pm

Yesterday on The Trail

in Barrington Bay

I heard The Willets

The Sound of Childhood

in Jordan Bay

My Grandfather wrote

about The Willet’s song

in Anchorage Northeast:

“My own ear has seldom caught “Willet”

in the famous and far-piercing call.

To me it is pilly-will-wee,

with the accent on the last syllable,

or pill-wee-wee, with the accent

on the second,

in either case repeated over and over

and virtually always in flight.

It is a high, hurrying, questioning cry,

urgent of something I can only imagine,

a glad sound on the bird’s coursings of the shore,

a call of fulfillment(sic)

and the June-morning glory

of being alive and a-wing.”

Howard Talbot Walden 2nd

Anchorage Northeast p.189