I Believe These Magpies Followed Me

here across the Rhinelands. I heard them

before seeing them folic betwixt the bushes

and trees. Aroused in this house in Schopp

village steeply cradled against a hillside

buried in thickets of long-legged-bark

tall pines and oaks. I have not felt the silence

I find with only blackbirds and magpies

harmonizing songs through this late morning,

an assembly of tranquil blend of bleeps, beeps

away from society’s noise, a city gathering—

is a wind away. Wind gathers whistles here.

The silence tempts a yellow-eyed white cat

on my windowpane realizing this house

is not empty. I tell the cat, “Guten morgen!”

Greeting this cat as I am new in this place,

a house peering into a valley, listening. I do

not have a phone app for translating

the yellow-eyed white cat, birds, buzzing

flies, bees, or my breathing. I have not heard

my breath in years.