Watching Starlings (Watching Two Starlings High In A Black Walnut Tree in April)

Their balance, while temporary, seems eternally sure.
One rubs his beak on the sun-warmed bark

like a blade on a whetstone.
The other chooses from the roughly

ten thousand sounds starlings are capable
of making, emitting a two-tone whistle

which mimics the sound of the second
half of a life-changing question.

If not for the wind chime’s song I would not have known
what I wasn’t seeing, so still it all seemed.

Only by not watching starlings could I
acknowledge the entire tree was moving

with the flexibility the most exact feeling or
thought must have to survive year after year

as it branches out, spreading across open space.
Ask a starling what the difference is between feeling and thought

who, stopping for minutes, may seem like they will remain
as long as they need, completely still, utterly certain

in each feather that everything in fact is moving
at the speed of the first half of a life-changing answer