Whip-O-Wills

After 50 or 100 repetitions they fly either closer or farther away. Few things I hate in nature more than their insistent song. Raise the dead, I swear. Most of them, I miss completely, being a sound sleeper, but if I've just gone to bed or wake for some reason, and one is going off, I just get up and make a cup of coffee. Goat-suckers. They've ruined a night's sleep more than everything else combined. I turn on the radio, listen to Bela, three in the morning, a terrible sense of longing. This is when, if I didn't live alone, I'd burrow in, between armpit and breast, pretend there was no world outside my sense. What courtship ritual requires 117 perfect reproductions of the same sequence of sounds? It's sick. If I ever commit suicide, it will be because of a Whip-O-Will. One catches you at the wrong time and there is no recourse but a shotgun to the mouth. I'm upset, almost mad, that at the very moment I decide I'll finally sleep, a fucking bird is going for the record. Nothing for it but to get up, who could sleep through that? K D Laing, then a delta blues thing, Son House, I think, that almost slack guitar. Mississippi John Hurt. A song that spoke to loss. Being confused is oddly comforting. Noon prayer, gab-fest.