October,
breathing fire
returns;
sweeping the contours of the hills
until the shrouded wood
exhales
into brittle phantom lines.

The starlings are back.
They amass the giants;
these ancients oaks that line my street,
making huge reckless noise,
voided speech.
A goliath black mass
cloaking the high,
immaculate blue
stunned into cloudless watchfulness.

Somehow they remember
this point in time,
this board they keep,
a depot
for these millioned
dark visitors, alone.

I think they carry the signature memory in
the ovum of their unborn,
I think they
swooping in for a moment,
pause in celebration
to the collaborative passing
of the swift orangeblack
colors of their day.

I watch wide-eyed and silent
from my doorway
at the great cacophony they create,
all talking at once to no one listening,
cloaking the trees
like shifting black leaves.

Then, from some holystone cue,
they lift at once-
like a single thought
to a chanted destination;
-requiem for summer’s mirth
born like a longing
in the vessel of the earth.