There they are again, that skein of
black birds rising in a murmuration
like a scarf thrown against the twilight
as they home on the nearby pine forest.
And what do these trees think of their
nightly visitors as they offer their dense
branches to a multitude? Do they hear
the cacophony of birds settling in?
Slow moving in the wind, rooted to one
place unlike the starlings, trees hum in
their own language, saying who knows
what to one another or to the darkening sky.
These birds are a moving sketch on the
sunset, their black transparent veil drifting
like an earthborn cloud as they rise and
gyre their way to a promise of sleep.
Last night I lay awake, my thoughts
flinging themselves into the night, not
anxious thoughts, just flashes of light
from my tunnel of memories.
And I envied those birds, the community
of them and the one mind that conducts
their flight as if it were a score of notes
we could learn to sing before nightfall.
–
Penny Harter lives in southern New Jersey, about a half-hour inland from the Atlantic Ocean. She wrote and shared new work daily during the lockdown months of Covid, hoping to offer solace and hope in her work. Recently, after some weeks of not writing much, she has begun again. Her most recent books are Keeping Time: Haibun for the Journey (Kelsay Books, 2023), Still-Water Days (Kelsay Books, 2021), and A Prayer the Body Makes (Kelsay Books, 2020). Please visit her website at pennyharterpoet.com.
© 2024, Penny Harter
Halfway Down the Stairs 