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Your forked tails are calligraphy brushes
writing me letters on air
with gliding seeds and clouds of gnats,

while the earth keeps flying,
never stopping to build a nest.

I keep asking you for answers,
what is the language of home? I ask.

Mud, you sing, and you me show me a grass stem
trailing roots from a clod of soil.

And I see our planet migrating through space
like you my summer visitors –

the Saharas of your undersides!
The red mountains of your faces!
The moonlit nights of your wings!

You sing about shoals of flying fish
and your eyes glitter with seas.

Your speech is more like a sigh
or the creak of a sail on the deep.

I can’t sit still. My shoulders ache
as if I’ve been flying for weeks.

I think about hanging upside-down from the ceiling,
even my windows open their beaks.

I gather white feathers that float down
like summer snowflakes from your beam.
My fingers grip the pen like an overhead wire.

What is this letter I’m writing on paper
new as a fledgling’s breast?

What are these insects I feed my pages?

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