Starling Song

We stop and let the sky take hold of our breath

As the last of the evening light flees to the west

The stars they soon will start to pace overhead

Like the rush in a seashell

Or a hum in the maize

Or the mutter of pages turned in haste

The banks of the river blue lie folded in pleats

Like the lines that the morning left pressed into your cheek

The Sun, a fading creature, shivers with your heartbeat

They fly over the stories held in the peat

Telling their own in a million wing beats

Like the rush in a seashell

Or a hum in the maize

Or the mutter of pages turned in haste

Above a leviathan assembles in the sky

It's like watching a thought take hold in someone else's eyes

And I wish I could hear all the thoughts in your mind

Then as everything falters and everything falls

Like the hush before breakers shatter the shore

They fly over the stories held in the peat

Telling their own in a million wing beats

Like the rush in a seashell

Or a hum in the maize

Or the mutter of pages turned in haste