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.)