Murmuration
       

A row of resting birds makes visible a distant power line
that the sky had blotted out,

yet others of their flock cannot stop moving—
they fret, twirling and rising in a surge

like the leaves kicked up yesterday,
which blew into my car window

as I drove to meet you. It all seems so unsettled—
and though we long for clarity,

for the uncertainty to settle and present itself
still as a sleeping bird,

we glory in the delay, in not knowing,
when an answer would eliminate

all possibilities but one. Better the agitated world,
birds scattering past each other in their frenzy.

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Copyright © 2014 Lisa Ampleman All rights reserved
from Full Cry
The National Federation of State Poetry Societies Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission