Sunrise, Post Mills, VT — by Laura Pulaski
Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, a wry exchange, a poem or anecdote or reflection… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and that might strike us all as interesting or funny or poignant.
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Dear Daybreak:
“Weep for what little things could make them glad.” Robert Frost
“Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whippoorwill.” Every summer twilight since we moved to our hill in Vermont in 1991. Repetitive almost to the point of tedium, except for that delightful lift in the third syllable. I remember our kids giggling at the refrain as we put them to bed, and recently their kids, all six years old, doing the same these twenty-four years later. Cars would sometimes stop on our road and listen to a sound that had become rare in our world. We call our place Whippoorwill Hill, as the sign from a dear friend announces at our entrance.
When my mom was visiting in the mid-nineties, she remarked with joy on her first night, “Whippoorwills! We used to have them in Jersey, but I haven’t heard them for decades, since you were the kids’ age!” But then, after the second night, she said, “Those whippoorwills. They do go on and on…” The morning after the third night she appeared blurry-eyed at breakfast. “Damned whippoorwills! Right outside my window. All night long!”
So, on the fourth night I had an idea after Mom had gone to bed. A scarecrow! Some of my waggish students had put a blowup doll in my car at school. Here’s a picture of it along with Leslie, the kids, and our Bernese, Moffett.
I dressed the doll in sweat pants and shirt, fastened a little rope around her neck, and hung her from the upper deck to swing around in front of Mom’s bedroom window and scare the whippoorwill away.
A tranquil night ensued, but then the house was aroused by screams from Mom’s room. We rushed in to see her standing in the corner pointing to the window. “There’s a naked woman!” And, sure enough, the blow-up doll, the wind having stripped her sweats, swung from her neck in the breeze.
This incident was of course an outlier. Usually the perky refrain between the always hidden little birds would continue to bring joy to all of us lucky enough to hear, every summer night since ’91. Until about a month ago. Silence. “Where are our whippoorwills?” Leslie said after a few silent nights. Where, indeed…?
As I look out on my smoke-diminished mountain views, I reflect on all the big things making me sad: my sister, Lynn, passing (“I’m going to see Mom and Dad,” she said in our last conversation.); “Cry the Beloved Country,” as fascism marches; our self-induced planet disaster…. So how can I possibly tear up over the silence of a little bird?
— Bruce Paul Richards, Newbury, VT, author of Jumping the Shark and Other True Stories (Except One)
Dear Daybreak:
Red, ripe tomatoes
Glistening warm in the sun
Feed my body and soul.
— Haiku by Kathy Manning, West Hartford
Did you miss Dear Daybreak last week? You’ll find it here.