What are magpies, if not the words of poets
lifted from the page and thrown into the air?
They scribble all that could ever be written
on the wind, fold it on high boughs.
Those pitiless beaks could run you through,
that beady approach, too close for comfort,
could stop your blood. Subversive, nuns in negative,
they garble their arpeggios – crescendo, decrescendo –
dripping cool discords along the arc of daybreak, dusk,
where light and dark define the world.
What are magpies, if not the words of poets
lifting from the page and swooping on the heart.