The Rooks

I walked through cold, ear-drumming air,

Up to the fell then down to the trees,

Where contemplation was thieved

By a cacophony of caws.

The rooks - swooping or roosting, two

that stared like white eyes in air,

And then they were gone.

A rook’s mind is a thing of shreds,

Of scraps of sound and sight.

Without a known perch or gunk to land on,

They are better than us.

Without a sentence of song,

The black birds rose up from the trees

In a smudgy clatter, a cloud of scrawls;

They passed over my head and were gone.

I knew them by their voices.

But if they had not spoken?