are nothing compared to the flocks of canadian geese hooting and stomping by the fox river, or tittering hordes of black bodies in bushes that chitter scream
and wrestle, unseen, shivering branches like god’s voice across the parking lot. spring brings a conflagration of feathers, a rising tide of robins on lawns, the cardinals’ call and
response across campus, and bully crows shredding the house finches’ nests. if birds are psychopomps, ferrying messages back from the dead, whose indignant complaints
rain down from the trees? whose warnings follow me from car to sidewalk to sagging Hall, where empty corridors and crucifixes glow dully, and wordless, in ancient yellow light?
