November PAD 5

The Grackles


We think the sky noble
because it invites possibility
but the real work is on the ground
for the opportunity obsessed.
Take grackles, for instance.
Watch as they dart and grab after
an apple core left in the camps quad,
speckled with ants, nearly rotten,
before the wet soil
takes it back for seed.

They fight over this throwaway,
beak to beak, until is breaks into pieces,
inviting their fearless, onlooking friends
down from the power lines
to join the ruckus.
There is beauty to this,
beyond instinct or hope.
The fruit that has fallen is now
obtainable as fragments.
Those black birds
this thin desire of will
is what keeps us flocking
into the field and beyond it.