Black poured from the sky like returning smoke
and jostled among leafless trees where all
those chittering wings, shrill fugitives of fall,
clung to the treetops like a witch’s cloak
until woods dispossessed by those shrill herds
heaved with a gust of ice that roused an urge
that found its outlet in a skyward surge
and shook the barren landscape free of birds.
And having burdened every summer-seeker
with bitter hints of dismal days in store,
winter reclaimed on ground it briefly lost
solstitial boundaries the starlings crossed
as winds once kind dispelled a springlike roar
too late to hold a country growing bleaker.