Starlings name the sky, the skirt. They swoon  

and every one fills the twilight. A stuck leaf  

or shoe-black in the moonlight: grief’s story  

tells everything, and we wake the hill to climb 

where the starlings circle. The lovely hang  

of their wings, of a stranger—distance in waves— 

as wind swings a swingset. Is it that color,  

the sky, exactly? Painted, turned toward— 

upward slightly—you are lying through  

your sunset. O to be a fortune-teller. O  

to make still. Voices, shadows, bodies— 

the merit of a sculpture, of starlings.  

A locked door, faces shaped like candles,  

like memory hacking light, the Old English  

word for saw blade, a snout, a thrashing river, 

and we remember to rejoice in fever. Cross 

your arms over your chest, measure the distance 

between the wicker chair and the landfill, 

and tell me, starling, that miracles never happen.