A Chorused Flight of Birds
Startled aloft by clatter from the ground
they wheel and climb, globbed by an unseen force
that crowds them in a warping, flexing ball.
This harmony of sight requires no sound
to guide their flock-together churning course,
to tell them when to glide and when to stall.
The multitude, connected wing to wing,
once joined, now flies apart as the group aborts
the flight, dispersing, single in their fall,
their fluttered voice no longer massed to sing
for all.
(From the anthology, Open Windows 2005, edited by Matt Davis and Sonya Unrein, Ghost Road Press, 2005.)
