REDWINGS

Maybe you've noticed that around here
red-winged blackbirds aren't rare,
but they aren't seen often either, and then, at distance,
banking away from roads as we pass.

But one morning, I saw a hundred
more, feeding on seed I'd scattered
under a line of pines planted
more than a hundred years before.

Almost at rest, their feathers folded close,
only yellow wingbars
break their black bodies. But when, as they did,
all at once, they lifted, that red...

I've tried for a long time, and maybe should,
to tell you how they disembodied redwings
flared and vanished.
I've lost them in every telling.

So much for me. I could die now, anyway.
Could you? We will close our eyes
and rest, in case the blackbirds, in slow motion,
assume again the flames they are, and rise.
---William Heyen