Starlings lead me through the hills,
only to vanish; sunlight shrouds
itself in passing clouds, cracks of mystery,
the lung-luring air of a November afternoon
sucks me into a black hole, I’m lost
in a caravan of thoughts, I murmur
a mantra that does not soothe, cannot move
me as I envision their flight, each skein
a muscle memory, a dance
that murmurates like mountain air.
Subsumed by rays of sunlight;
I’m neither wave nor particle,
neither person nor angel.
Wings of vapor start to sprout,
flush against my scapula.
Rooted to the earth, I stand
waiting for these birds to return; waiting
for one black-eyed starling to beckon.
Adina Kopinsky is an emerging poet living in Israel with her husband and three sons. She has work published or forthcoming in Rust + Moth, SWWIM Every Day, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among other publications.
