July 2025 - Trail of Song

July is the sweet spot of summer. Hopes for snaring days of ease or adventure still run high. The sun’s blazing presence, despite our recent heatwave, still holds wonder in our eyes. Indeed, early summer is a pleasant dream from which we’ve been roused but not yet fully awakened. The world and work and worry will await us always - at no time more than now. But we should also follow this month’s featured poet’s example and savor the special moments of the season, tucking them away as spiritual sustenance against hard struggles, both current and yet to come.

Trail of Song

by Dawn Paul

A veery unravels his glissade of song

from the top of a tall oak along this trail

and I am reminded of the deep forest

at Saguenay in Quebec,

filled at dusk with veery song

every night we tented there.

As the light faded, one bird would

call a few tentative notes,

then others would join in

like an orchestra tuning up in the trees.

Soon melodies poured through the air,

thrush songs like crystal

chandeliers in the wind.

One bird now, yet I hear them all,

decades ago, hundreds of miles north

on the St. Lawrence River.

Dawn Paul is the author of the novels The Country of Loneliness and Still River and the poetry chapbook What We Still Don’t Know. Paul has been a recipient of residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Spring Creek Project, Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories and Isles of Shoals Marine Labs. Her poetry has been published in anthologies, journals and most recently, Orion Magazine. “Trail of Song” was originally published in the plein air chapbook Paths Tracks Trails.