WINGLESS FLIGHT

Lumber, steel, concrete multiply

Consume square feet

Beneath the geese, gull, and other flocks that

Increase on small grass plots,

Migrate along the oldest routes,

Perch on the flat roof

Of a deserted retail store,

Obsolete among a grid

Of empty parking lots.

There is an observer, who visits,

Unseen among a flock of starlings

In a flight show, the yellow beak

Is seen, the spattered breast

And cropped tail repeated for

Each bird identifies its kind

Picks through the debris, scatters

The dust with their wings

Pass before the intruder in mass

A sudden fly by and hover

Surrounds the single face,

Shades the eyes, startled.

As a sudden noise might take

The breath away or weaken the legs;

Might stop the eye lids’

Carefully timed closure or turn

The head to align the ear

Or brace the foot

For the start of the flight

From the observed, the studied,

The single mind among many

Twists the plot to be unraveled

Stretches out the morning’s pause

Gives the wingless a moment’s

Flight among the migrants.

© cmheuer, 2013