They were starlings

On my way back from Alabama, the birds were on their way wherever.

Their bodies, so many strewn in long lines across the sky, looked like

the words I wrote as a child before I knew how to write words.

I thought my thoughts would simply announce themselves to the page

if I pressed my pencil to it. And still, as I write this poem, I'm waiting

to see what I'm going to tell myself. The birds landed in an empty

field, gleaning for whatever it was they'd find. The clouds, so whipped

by wind, turned the sky a milky blue, pouring down fast and thick as paint

as I drove under it. There is so much missing in the world I try to write about:

I don't know what kind of birds or what had been planted or what to call

a cloud that does that. I'd like to say I don't need to know to love them,

but why else did I spend a lifetime looking for my name? I promise myself

I will look into it later so for now I look at their bodies, try to remember.

For now, a correction: the field was not an empty field. It was so full of birds.