"Through A Glass Darkly" (inspired by Jim)

A thousand blackbirds in a November field

Are worth one picture, each of them saying

The one word they know, some old saying

Seeming almost familiar but not quite right,

Composed despite no frame of reference now,

The cropped expanse of corn chaff and dust

Going on forever, but distance without depth,

The two dimensions of the field and the birds.

 

At some unspoken signal they all lift a little

In a single gesture, somehow both frantic

And posed, not flying but paused on the edge

Of as far as you can come, folding and falling

Into this scene fading to black, the old story

Of your life, unable to rise above it, the air

Become unbearably heavy, the weight of their

One shadow more than you or they can bear.





Poetry by countryfog
Read 446 times
Written on 2012-11-20 at 16:58

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josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
The massed flight of birds in flock is amazing to me. Some collective consciousness must direct their coordination but the process mystifies me. I get the sense that for that short time of collective flight they merge their minds and knowledge into one entity powerful and knowing well beyond the sum of its parts.

Fog you have captured that beautifully.
2012-11-20



I've always stopped what I was doing to watch the flow of blackbirds, the coordinated flight, the ever-changing cloud of them. I seem to like the black birds best: the vultures, crows, ravens, blackbirds, I don't know why, though I suppose, being plain of plumage, I identify.
2012-11-20