The Coast of Nowhere II

My best friend that winter was a cardinal,
male by his call. At the time I wrote
in the closet of a rented house, my desk
a piece of plywood laid atop stacked 
cinder blocks. Our unspoken competition 
was to see who could get working before
the other. If I sat down in the dark
before he called from his oak perch,
I would turn on the light and tap twice
against the window. But if his song
rousted me from bed, I would stagger
to my chair and signal with the lamp,
You win, in Morse code. We didn’t bother
keeping score as sleep was rare for me
and dread rampant, giving me a leg up
on my bird brother. One Tuesday in February 
he failed to show. Sleet and black rain 
pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn 
that reaches through the window, hissing, 
Your heart never was a bird let alone
a bright-red singing one. I wondered
if he’d met his fate the day before:
the supreme banality of a house cat,
perhaps, concealed behind a feeder 
filled with sun- and safflower seeds. I 
went to my job, worked late, drove
the lakeshore home, and, on the coast
of nowhere, slept for once the sleep 
of the drowned. Woke to: Dear-dear,
the notes faint as if heard from underwater,
then sharper, from high in the oak,
Dear-dear-dear-dear. My room flooding
with light and orbiting motes, I blinked
away the glare, looked out the window:
early sun on fresh snow and a bird 
I knew was naming me.