There are wings in the window.

I point out the great whiteness

of the heron as he soars impossibly huge

against a sky bruised with early evening.

You say it’s already getting darker,

the summer a fish slipping through our fingers.

Our dove hotel still empty,

but the stream has a new island I have yet to see.

I think of a gangster’s sadness at wild ducks

leaving a swimming pool as I watch

the starlings steal our blueberries.

Sparrows are not grateful,

they dance in the hedges

making nests for babies who will fly away.

Still when our little boy brings us pigeon feathers,

we coo at their lightness, their freedom,

how they tickle under the chin.

I think maybe this sickness,

this nearly losing everything,

is a kind of migration,

a mirror that never stays still,

words written on water.

And at last I have a home,

a place to float back to.