Migration 

This time of year the birds are making elegant mobs,

tragic and sinister in gathering clouds.

It always made me sad to see the one trailing at the end,

falling behind, tripping like a foot of a musical note, 

dark dots making swirls over 

and around the obscene billboards and grim buildings

gathering in the empty trees like relentless matching ornaments,

no distinction between them from this distance,

their eyes kept from me, their hearts, beating blue-red compasses

leading to Florida. I watch them like a child might watch a father love

another child better— 

smashing into commuter planes or into a sky-blue tower,

(the greatest trick of humans, making the sky into matter—)

those little feathery dinosaurs stopping at the mall ponds

to drink, calling out to one another, sensing the change

in the wind, working as a team—it makes me want 

to get stoned on the front steps. Lit from within like a Chinese lantern—

seeing these migrating jewels, elegant survivors, 

feathered delicacies, musical geniuses, flinging like a ballerina 

made up of smaller ballerinas, 

these small dwindling barrettes of Nature— 

there’s simply nothing more important than them making it—

I want to haul my mattress out onto the roof 

and forget my cat, down in the bedroom.

I want to compare them to the stars, to light, to pepper.

I want to follow them. Want to do something 

other than take this exit off the freeway

and leave them in my rear view mirror: 

fumbling clear black angels, backup dancers, flawless cheerleading squad

from some more transcended universe

piling up on one another, perfectly—swallowing the sky like a silk scarf,

above, silent, powerful, better than me, in every way,

hustling over the shipwrecked world.