The Shadows of Birds

The shadows of birds


Between red buildings, bright blue flies its kite
the eyeful seeded with flurries of uncertain birds;
Only this is relevant, choppy as a newsreel
unfolding a story which never sticks around or yet quite fades
Extending beyond the brain into some coalescing pool
of nothing mattering/ mattering very much.
As if two children playing on different continents
glance upward at the same faint shimmering movement,
As though this October day, this sun, this broken thought
is all that marks us out us human, this recognition
of the absence of light where light briefly fails to pass.
We mark the choreography and its notation
the trajectory of miraculous and ordinary birds,
Some dim lobe marked out for remembering then forgetting
how some things end, are endless, how long they last.