Remembering Starlings

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