For a week now each morning, just after dawn, thousands of blackbirds pass over, heading east toward the lifting light, to some field no doubt, scavenging

and squabbling over the leavings in the stubble, the din of their quavering quarrels. And each evening near dusk they pass over again, heading west, following the curve where the horizon falls into the last light they will never catch up to, coming to rest perhaps in the bare trees by another field, or perhaps in my little woods where they bend every branch with the weight of their folded wings, deepening the darkness. For a few weeks every fall I am the nexus of their passages, the one fixed point in their flights, morning star and evening star. The moments of seeking between seasons, neither staying nor yet going, those few weeks when there is nothing changing, and everything.