Here's today's Daily Poem - September 7, 2009

Thinking We Know What We Want, We Reach For It

I’m thinking again, of the grackles we watched last night.
Not thinking— I’m seeing them again and hearing
as they rise en masse from the crown of an old oak,
where, until that moment we had not realized they were roosting.
Hear their twittering, their anxious chatter as they take flight
and turn in unison from the east and loop west, that spilled cackle as they rise
and fall by some shared intuition on the air above the stubble hay.
See one small flock break from the rest and fold back on itself,
east, but further south, like a wave retreating at a slant over its own foam.
I’m hearing the sound of perhaps 500 wings flutter as they plunge
forward, a sound like the swish of silks over taffetas as Odette hurries
down the swept gravel path toward some assignation. She is wearing grackle-
black. See how it shimmers with flecks of autumn leaf. She is rushing because
Swann has been sulking lately and she must, she simply must get away.
And because dusk is falling. Because the air is cooling and the red sun rests
in a net of chestnut limbs. Because she is always hurtling, like a bird,
navigating some unseen path, rushing toward what might fill the void.
See the birds return in twos or threes from the neighbor’s lindens.
How they disappear into their silence.