Summer 2026
/ zugunruhe
a flock has like a million birds
synced up with their neighbors,
knowing precisely the distance
between them, before they even
move. Home for the holidays,
I saw this. Stopped on Pendleton
Pike, tittles on all the powerlines,
a murmur above the trees, charged
up like mallets on a batterhead, drum-
rolling up under the setting sun.
Too far to crack if they were
grackles or cowbirds, but they all
looked black to me. Oh starlings,
it is so hard to pick one of you
from your crowd or congregation.
Then a thunder without rain, they
hang out suspended in the air. They
lose each other and themselves, but
the distance is settled, by something
they know by heart. Suddenly, they’re
all coming or going the same way.
2026