Out of a great breathing emerge
winged things, a leafing, a shaping, a gathering.
Purple grackle crouch thick as leaves
in the trees. Then at some faint twinge
in the fabric of the day, they’re wings—
a black rage in the sky. They’re all
like that: starlings like schools of fish,
darting and swarming; thousands of snow geese
lifting and dropping to the ponds in waves;
even the lone marsh hawk, glinting
like a huge butterfly, buckles to wind
inside a faultless curve. Before dark,
low tide gathers plovers and pipers
dipping into the muck. The sunset sky
turns restless and winged: so many nights
in the world, who could count them?
The one breath keeps on like a sleeping child
under a down quilt, turning by the will
of a dream, or the twitch of a muscle that knows
what it sends away, and what it holds.