The way things are going,
there’ll be no quick fix, no turning
back the way that flock of starlings
skirls back on itself then swerves forward,
swabbing and scrawling the shell-pink
buffed sky, while I stand in two minds
on this scuffed bridge leaning over
the fudged river that slooshes its dark way
to open harbours and the glistering sea.
Like flak from fire, a blizzard of evacuees,
that hula-hooping sky-swarm of starlings
swoops and loops the dog rose sky,
while any way I look the writing’s
on the wall. I watch the hurly-burlyed,
humdrummed traffic belch to a stop,
fugging, clacking, charring the clotted air,
making it clear things are going to get
a whole lot worse before they get better.
That flickered, fluttered hurry scurry
of starlings sweeps left, then swishes right
through the violet sky while I huddle
and huff, with a dove in one ear saying
look the other way, a hawk in the other
braying self-righteous fury. It’s hard
not to turn back to a time when one look
at you and I knew things were going to get
a whole lot better before they’d get worse.
That hue and cry, those hurricanes
of starlings swoosh and swirl their fractals
over towers, hotels, hospitals, flyovers,
catamarans, city-dwellers, passers-through,
who might as well take a leap and try following
after that scatter wheeling circus of shadows
as slowly turn and make their dark way
homeward, never slowing, not knowing
the way things are going.