Lake Effect, Spring 2012, Volume 16: Murmuration

Lisa Ampleman

 

Murmuration

A row of resting birds makes visible a distant power line which the sky had blotted out,
yet others of their flock cannot stop moving— they fret, twirling and rising in a surge

like the leaves kicked up yesterday which blew into my car window
as I drove to meet you. It all seems so unsettled— and though we long for clarity,

for the uncertainty to settle and present itself
still as a sleeping bird,

we glory in the delay, in not knowing,
when an answer would eliminate

all possibilities but one. Better the agitated world,
birds scattering past each other in their frenzy.