Starling Song

We stop and let the sky take hold of our breath
As the last of the evening light flees to the west
The stars they soon will start to pace overhead

Like the rush in a seashell
Or a hum in the maize
Or the mutter of pages turned in haste

The banks of the river blue lie folded in pleats
Like the lines that the morning left pressed into your cheek
The Sun, a fading creature, shivers with your heartbeat
They fly over the stories held in the peat
Telling their own in a million wing beats

Like the rush in a seashell
Or a hum in the maize
Or the mutter of pages turned in haste

Above a leviathan assembles in the sky
It's like watching a thought take hold in someone else's eyes
And I wish I could hear all the thoughts in your mind
Then as everything falters and everything falls

Like the hush before breakers shatter the shore
They fly over the stories held in the peat
Telling their own in a million wing beats

Like the rush in a seashell
Or a hum in the maize
Or the mutter of pages turned in haste