Blackbirds

I am 52 years old, and have spent

truly the better part

of my life out-of-doors

but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head

a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward

I saw a flock of blackbirds

rounding a curve I didn’t know was there

and the sound was simply all those wings

just feathers against air, against gravity

and such a beautiful winning

the whole flock taking a long, wide turn

as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society

with its cruelty and fear

its apathy and exhaustion

what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being

here, in this curving and soaring world

so that when, every now and then,

mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives

and when, even more rarely,

we manage to unite and move together

toward a common good,

and can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.

-- Julie Cadwallader Staub