starlings

It was a swelling sea of starlings
that drifted across the sky,
the flat gray of sky
which had refused
for the better part of three weeks
to see a life of brighter things, and I

could hear them:
the frantic flapping of countless wings
and their metallic call, little and shrill
but it was their wings I noticed mostly
and everything else went still.

I forgot about the cars rumbling past,
and my cardigan flapping open,
unaware of even my daughter at my heels,
shivering and barefoot in January's brittle air.

I watched them with an eye more keen
to watch figures flit across a screen
than the black ink spot of a bird 
against a formless sky.

I watched until they became one idea,
one mind, a fluid swarm,
siphoned into a ribbon of silken Braille,
their collective motion
creating billowing images,
a meaning that I could not decipher.

I wonder now what it was all for:
why this January afternoon?
why these hills over which thin grids of neighborhoods lie?
what was so special about my rooftop, my patchwork of green
that they would fly, orchestrated and with purpose,
to the skeletal trees just over there, to settle at once 
and preen their feathers
and share their stories in clacking voices
as well as their berries and half-frozen worms.

Why had I never seen them before?
By the thousands in a flight that became a dance
with a meaning too intelligent,
too instinctual,
for me to understand.

wild

Last year I observed the way 

a tendril from the cucumber plant in my garden 

reached daintily, purposefully

toward the closest things to offer itself -

in this instance, 

the dependable stalk of a sunflower sister.

In the spring, while driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour

I saw a newborn fawn nursing its mother

in a strip of grass near a smattering of trees.

Being the passenger, I indulged in a long look

from the back window

at that vulnerable pair

not ten feet from the edge of the road roaring with machines

Years ago I was witness to a sky -

after driving miles into the hill country,

after the earth had completed a rotation:

the glittering depths and heights I'd missed in the glare of

porch lamps, street lights, city lights

and I tried counting the falling stars

whipping their wild tales behind them.

Have you seen these wild, untamed things?

Have you woken up before the dawn,

looked in the mirror and held in wonder

your own hair, your skin, your precious face as it is:

as it is, all wild and naked and true

with its folds, its angles and dimples, and soft places.

Have you listened closely

and heard not the rush of traffic,

but instead, the rush of blood pounding in your temples

and the breath that passes hot behind your teeth?

Have you felt the wild pulse of your heartbeat

while in the embrace of knowing trees,

or dizzy under a great, foreboding sky,

or at the threshold of a fickle ocean,

or on lush, green foothills 

alive and alive and bursting with life?

We were meant to feel how the earth shifts underfoot

To eat the dirt from which we were shaped

To know the slant of the sun and the direction of mosses

To climb until it hurts and let our eyes roll wildly in our skulls

And all of it is so good! it's what he spoke into being,

our goodness.

So what if we trust our wild selves

as we trust the wild to itself,

and we don't have to offer anything for

we are already wild.

a trade

How quiet my mind
how clear the silence
like an evergreen twinkling night
when I shut the door to that shouting house
where knowledge and argument and evidence
hold me hostage,
and I walk off into the cool, clear evening
breathe it sharp into my lungs,
feel my head swim in the emptiness of it all,
how good it feels.

You see,
it all comes down to that desire
to be correct, right, good, fair, knowing -
which may sound noble
but I require the ability to be constantly so,
at every moment, if possible.
I only just realized the exhausting
implications of upholding this impossibility.
I am exhausted.

Trying to contain it all,
cradled in my arms like a thing I must protect,
the delicate ice crystals of words that must not offend, 
intentions that must not be misconstrued.
But I can't see straight, I can't think straight
all they do is tell me how I've failed.
This was not a loving house
And it was not built by my hands alone,
yet I alone have chosen to stay.

But I don't have to be subject to this.
I will try something new:
what if the shouts
became chatter
became whispers
became silence.

What if I release the constant scramble of words
that echo and bounce about in my mind?
I could settle my shoulders, my tightly wound arms
dropping the restraints of expectation,
reach instead for
tenderness.

What if I fold myself gently into all I see as good,
care not what the world does, as long as I know
I am wrapping myself in kindness
leaving littles glimmers of it in my wake.

What if I allow you space to
live in the lightest truth you know,
that space in the air 
between the decision to leap and
(I just love love love you
regardless of) where you land.

What if I choose to be walking evidence
of the human experience, all of it
without apology or explanation,
and I let you come to your own conclusions.

What if I talk about flowers
and Jesus
and my children
and what I had for lunch
and the gentle face of a white moth
and how the dusty sunbeams stream through the window
and the deep, jeweled purple of a plum
even if it makes you laugh.

What if I just speak in love -
yes, I'll make this trade:
complaints for love
sarcasm for love
judgment for love
criticism for love.

What if the silence became whispers again,
but whispers of truth, encouragement, loveliness,
every good and perfect thing.
What then?