Sometimes the sky looks like a veil, raindrops sliding along the side of Earth,

making not so much as a sound, but for the tap, tap, spray and slime that shims

the window of my bedroom gently blind.

 

I don’t have answers for why gulls wing above the ocean at sunrise, or for why pelicans

sing to the water at sunset but to pluck larder from its depths, yet, I do know that this cold reign 

is prescient, speaking aloud the death of democracy.

 

And the birds fly into this swollen sky, raucous pall of blackened wings, swooping in lockstep 

toward wisps of white steam, toward clouds, red, yellow, brown, teeming with water till they

explode the shroud, again, and again, and again.