American life in poetry

Many of you have seen flocks of birds or schools of minnows acting as if they were guided by a common intelligence, turning together, stopping together. Here is a poem by Debra Nystrom that beautifully describes a flight of swallows returning to their nests, acting as if they were of one mind. Notice how she extends the description to comment on the way human behavior differs from that of the birds.

Cliff Swallows – Missouri Breaks

Is it some turn of wind

that funnels them all down at once, or

is it their own voices netting

to bring them in – the roll and churr

of hundreds searing through river light

and cliff dust, each to its precise

mud nest on the face –

none of our own isolate

groping, wishing need could be sent

so unerringly to solace. But

this silk-skein flashing is like heaven

brought down: not to meet ground

or water – to enter

the riven earth and disappear.