MURMURATION

You darlings of starlings
Treasurable in numbers unmeasurable,
How knowest where thou art or where thou goest,
Or understand the pleasure thou shows us
In the anticipation of the murmuration who givest the command
That forms the elusive band that dances through the air
And lives off the land

Is your flight a slave to instinct, all not as it seems
As in a blink
Your numbers sway… hither, thither and yon
Now here, now there and now gone
Talk to me, tell me how
Thou comest and goest through the corridor of air
Up and down and all around
A murmuration of artistic flair

Toward a destination… a murmuring movement of sound
Up at first light and off on a long flight
From the haven of the marsh
To the fields of feeding and the work of surviving
Then without dividing, back home again
Gliding… to the demand of an unheard command

When our time on earth is done
Will our souls join those… also gone Into the far flung…
Murmuration of humanity
To turn and swing and soar
Back to that familiar shore, beyond the Sun…
A destination that ends where it once begun.

Fred Lauck