Tuesday Poem: An Outlook
They have ruffled
the embers of evening
and flap from its flames.
They come like clockwork,
minutes later every eventide,
a loud returning that proclaims
the row of limes in which
they pause, en route to roosting
in the rookery, a place of rest.
They sketch black scripture in the sky. They watch
from trees where they don’t nest –
these pairs and threes, tens
and dozens making thousands –
while I, intent on praise and mesmerized, wonder what,
as they fly by, they might be and realize: they are the days.
