HUNTER’S BIRTHDAY

by Joanna Gilman Hyde

Clyde River, Nova Scotia 2:22pm

I pulled only half-way

off the road on Cape Island

to watch the biggest cloud

of Starlings I had ever seen –

they swooped, as a blanket

over my car & billowed

into a bare tree, decking it

with their blackness, leaf-like

& when they exploded

like fireworks

to mat themselves on overhead wires

I was entranced