Birds migrate at night.
Be quiet, listen carefully:
you can hear the
lift and fall of the wings,
two notes of a song,
you can see the
black images bisect
the retina of the moon,
you can guess their
pattern, their flight
their destination
far away to the south in
winter,
north in spring.
You can hear the lift and fall of the
wings,
the single cry of a mate,
millions of birds flying through
darkness over the sea and the land
in silence, through the
sleep
of other creatures.
You can guess their pattern, their
flight:
formations of birds in the night,
covering the sky with the
grid of their wings
making the stars blink --
intermittent.
Millions of birds flying through
as you stand on
the shore in the night
over the glittering, rattled ladders of
shale
hearing their wings and their flight.
You are used to
rain-pattered roofs, the drumming,
as abundant and isolated as tears
in the night.
You can guess their pattern, their flight.
But the
birds fly in silence,
swift as the wind,
invisible to the casual
eye.
Over the glittering, rattled ladders of shale
the birds
cross, tangential to the sea at night.
Hour upon hour you can sense the
undulation of wings.
If you lift your cheek quite carefully
you can
feel the kiss and the wisp of air
stirred by the inaudible
glide.
You can guess their pattern, their flight,
and, once or twice
in the night, sense
the splash of a songbird's spent body caught
in the sea's phosphorescence.
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