From Their Perch

Skeletal trees in the Costco parking lot.

Look at those buds, will you, turning

into blackbirds, four and twenty of them,

singing their song with the only 

voice they've been given,

wondering what all those shoppers below

are doing with carts seriously filled

trying to remember where they parked

while drivers search for an empty space

and not one of them singing.

One woman looks up and listens

drawing a small crowd of sudden bird-watchers,

interupting the consuming ritual

as the choir of birds scatters from their perch

reminding those on the ground 

whose woods these were

and not for sale. 

THis is the picture and text taken by Adele Scheele which inspired the poem 

As I was leaving Costco today, just before rain fell, I heard noises that I couldn’t place and then saw buds on the bare branches of trees that separated the aisles of cars. I looked again and saw movement and swarming of little black birds. So unexpected. Life alive in the lot.
Several men saw me looking and they too looked at the birds. We stood faces up to the rain, the wind, and the blackbirds. We smiled at each other before we buckled ourselves in our cars.