The Whistle

You could whistle me home from anywhere

in the neighborhood; avenues away,

I’d pick out your clear, alternating pair

of notes, the signal to quit my child’s play

and run back to our house for supper,

or a Saturday trip to the hardware store.

Unthrottled, wavering in the upper

reaches, your trilled summons traveled farther

than our few blocks. I’ve learned too, how your heart’s

radius extends, though its beat

has stopped. Still, some days a sudden fear darts

through me, whether it’s my own city street

I hurry across, or at a corner in an unknown

town: the high, vacant air arrests me—where’s home?

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©1995 by Kathy Mangan, from her most recent book of poems Above the Tree Line, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1995. Reprinted by permission of Kathy Mangan and the publisher.