… had I not been there as witness
no one would have seen a thing.
Mark Cocker, ‘Crow Country’
Dawn of ice-blue light.
A full moon still holding sway
above the pines.
Something draws me outside
to stand in the frost-licked grass,
lifting my eyes to the sky.
Streaming in from the east
a flock of rooks rise
in great loose skeins,
blending and skimming,
spinning high and wide
into the brightening sky,
looping back on themselves,
switching and slipping
from pattern to pattern
high above the horizon,
their call barely audible,
a familiar gravelly cackle,
wanting nothing more than this vast sky,
this shining vantage point.
High overhead
a starry shape-shifting entity,
wave after wave
as the planets balance.