Remembering Starlings
Perhaps we project on to starlings
that which we deplore in ourselves:
our numbers, our aggression, our
greed, and our cruelty. Like starlings,
we are taking over the world.
Terry Tempest Williams
Refuge
In particular this winter I miss
the birds their songs their extended
chests and lessons blend
calm and caution. Mostly
growing up I slept
in the north
bedroom and mostly the bed
kept to the corner and some springs
the starlings would nest
in the eaves in the coming away places
maybe three paces from my face. They made
joyous noise they became a palm
sized Prometheus each of them seizing us
from then sprung from winter. I wanted to be
awake next to them not only for their flight
but also they told me (or so
I wanted to imagine) the rats
had fled for good and forever at least
until the second coming
of the cold. Between the load bearing
wall and the outside
world and all throughout the fall
and winter they would scratch
and chew and I just knew they could dig
through and would
swarm and nights I wouldn't
sleep nights I would pound the wall and send them
briefly scattering. And by spring
starlings and they made a better noise.
Rather than patch the hole
those birds were attracted to my father
stood beneath my window
and shot at the pair of parents
one by one when they flew
in and out of feeding
their young. I woke one early
morning to the sound of gun
-fire: pop pop small furies
and the agitation and maybe the way
they would swoop down to him
and away from him and he'd shake
them off and laugh and eventually
he'd aim and they both were dead or maybe
today I'd say all three were
and eventually the babies too
starving to death their song
hungry hungry hungry
i listed to on the other side
of the wall until all
like the stopping of a faucet or
the deep interior of winter
was drip drip drip drip dripless quiet
