The Singer So Shy

She stood near the cold fireplace, watching the second-hand tick down to the hour. In another minute, the clock's bird would emerge and warble the hour. She reached up and touched the clock, tracing the gentle slope of the farmhouse roof, then trailing down the lilac strewn side, to the white fence framed dooryard. She wished she was there, where the air would smell of lilacs rather than smoke.

Her eyes went to the farm door, where the clever clockmaker had made a frame to hold poems.

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.

She ran a finger along the doorframe, feeling the gentle movement that would pull the card out. She wished she had a different poem to inlay; something cheerful to match the painted lilacs, and to distract her from the dull sounds of explosions outside.

Booming drums of the regiment

She touched the delicate lilac blossoms, the paint faded from two hundred years of family history. They had been carved by her great-grandfather’s great-grandfather after the first Civil War, inspired by the poetry of Walt Whitman. She’d always liked the clock. The little scene of the farmhouse, the sound of the hermit thrush and the gentle lull of the ticking.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d

She wished she knew a happier poem, and her eyes lingered on the poem card. Do not weep, war is kind. That one was Crane. She closed her eyes and listened to the ticking. She had always found the sound soothing, and now it was a calming refrain against the muffled gunfire and screams outside.

The Air raid siren pierced through the boarded windows. An incoming bomb, perhaps, or some brand of missile. Her eyes still closed; she pictured the projectile approaching from the Western front.

The unexplained glory flies above them

Somehow, she was certain it would hit her block.

She wanted to feel afraid, but she couldn’t muster the energy. If the missile would wait another forty-five seconds, the bird would emerge. She’d always loved the activity of it: the clicking of the internal gears, the hatch opening, then the little hermit thrush emerging to sing its warbling song.

"It made a "Cuckoo" when he made it," her grandmother had told her, then shook her head, "but that wore out about hundred years ago. Sometime in the '50’s I expect. My dad said he never heard it worked when he was a kid, so at least since then."

"Why's it sing then?" She'd asked

"I fixed it! About twenty years ago. I was furloughed during the Pandemic, so I taught myself clock work and added the electronics. When you're older I'll have to teach you so it can sing another hundred years!"

Years or months, all she wanted was once more. She peeked at the time. Thirty seconds. Then closed her eyes tight, trying to hide in her memories.

“Great-great grandpa would have liked it,” her grandmother would say every time it sang, “He read a lot of Whitman. You see the lilacs on the sides and the little thrush? Those are for Whitman.”

She touched the side of the clock, and smiled at the sensation of the lilacs, many a pointed blossom rising delicate. She wondered whether they’d break when the missile hit, and through the boarded windows she heard a dull noise. The sound of the projectile approaching. She opened her eyes, and they fell on the poem,

Soft blazing flag of the regiment

Eagle with crest of red and gold

She turned her gaze to the hatch. Twenty seconds until she could hear the song again.

O Singer bashful and tender

She thought of her mother. They had read When Lilacs Last at her funeral- the quiet acknowledgement of this family history built into a clock. Her eyes fell back to the poem.

Do not weep, war is kind.

They had read that one at her father’s funeral. That’s why she’d placed the poem in the door. He was a soldier, an early casualty of the war.

Your father tumbled in the yellow trenches

She pictured the projectile tumbling to the ground, an instrument of war and a victim. Her father loved the irony of the poem. He’d often recite it like a president giving a motivational speech.

Ten seconds.

“It was written for that terrible war,” he’d say, “And it shows us how horrid this war may well become. But to me it's also about our war against Time, which we fight with or without a purpose. Do we praise the fallen soldiers? Do we mourn them if they fall in battle, fighting for their belief? No, “The unexplained glory flies above them, great is the battle-god, great! And his kingdom- A field where a thousand corpses lie!”

Five seconds.

A dull 'thoom'. The sound of cries. The explosion would make her city a field to the battle-god. But the thrush, how she wanted it to emerge and sing the “song of the bleeding throat,” before she rejoined her parents, then the thrush could receive them comrades three, two, one, the gears began to move until

Solitary the thrush

Sings by himself a song.