The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Thousands of European starlings in murmuration

Swirling, dancing, filling the sky with wonder

Dancing to unheard music resonating from

The star-factories from which their basic elements emerged  

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Three break off from the flock and fly into the old farmhouse

Where the matron, long since gone, left grain on the kitchen floor

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They peck in time to the celestial music, separate, grow, metamorpihize 

One becomes an old country physician,

Another, Lady Wisdom with long gray hair draping down her back

The third a massive longshoreman with black olive skin

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The three join hands in a perichoresis

Singing in perfect three-part harmony

As the murmuration continues outside

Cosmic, ethereal, haunting, swaying

Dance of ordinary exquisite joy

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As the shadows lengthen

Starling flocks settle in newly harvested fields to glean

Stevedore and rural doc shape-shift into infants and 

Suckle at Hokhmah’s breasts