Sing out into the Dark

Into the Night

There’s a mockingbird who has been singing through the night.
Loudly.
Incessantly.
I won’t lie, it’s been infuriating the way he cycles through the songs of other birds while I lay there, wishing I could sleep.
I have wondered, more than a few times, why, again, it is we shouldn’t kill mocking birds.

And yet.

There is something wondrous.
Daring.
Heartbreaking, even.
About singing your song out into the night…a song woven of all you know, all you see, all you hear.
Not knowing who is out there listening.
Waiting.
But still honoring the instinct to gather yourself and sing anyway, hoping that what you seek is looking for you too.

I sat, in those predawn hours, thinking of all the ways I do that.
We do that.
Sing out into the dark.

How we want to be heard.
To be seen.
To be known as we are.
I think of the instinct we have to try.
The courage required to stand before the unknown and offer what we have, all of who we are, in the hopes of being met when the morning comes.

I think too of those songs I have heard.
The words.
The art.
The pieces of a person’s soul that they woven into something that matters.

And how I am better…more of myself…for having woken from my slumber to receive what they have shared.

In this often terrifying world, this is what I hope to do.
Sing my song.
Listen for others.
So that we may find each other.
And thus, our way through.

With love and fire~
Jo Anna