by paul Bluestein
From the perch of my apartment
23 floors above the crowded street,
I can see a kaleidoscope of birds.
Cigar-shaped chimney swifts
swoop and dart against the setting sun.
A V of geese race the clouds
of an approaching storm;
A murmuration of starlings swim
through the sky, flashing and wheeling
like a school of fish in perfect synchrony.
Not at all like the pods of people
washed up on the concrete shore below.
With paddling arms, graceless legs and clumsy
tortoise-shell backpacks, they crawl toward home,
swirling, seething, pushing and bumping
through the late afternoon sea, unmindful
of the show just above their heads,
but far beyond their reach.
— from Juniper Volume 4, Issue 3