Birds by John Savoie

Birds

Birds bead along the wire
rounded as water drops,
or a single note strung
across the sky’s crude stave,
Schumann’s repeating A
only he could hear,
black on black, sagging
in the middle like most
any symphony and this
one scored by Salvador
Dalí, the felt weight
of music or memory,
that one touch of your hand
sounding again and again,
till birds unfold their wings
and scatter to the woods,
droplets shivered from
a lustrous lab whose one
sharp bark sets the mind
free from its obsession.

by John Savoie, earlier version first published in Ellipsis

Editor’s Note: This poem is actually a single, very long sentence. Usually, I would find that daunting, but the skillful line breaks organize the imagery even as the length of the thought underscores the obsession of the narrator’s mind.