by Tamara Madison

Come,
let’s watch
the starlings dance
like a twisting net
in the pearl-gray
twilight: a billowing
black sheet, like waves
in the ocean,
the space
between each bird
a bubbling,
boiling backdrop
that they draw
their patterns on,
swooping
and rolling
in the mercury-gray
of dusk.
Come, let’s watch them
make their twisting
shapes, each one
its own piece
of the infinite.
Let’s watch them
dance
on evening’s
threshold,
before they are lost
to the too-bright
night of man.