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The Starlings Have Come
By Judith Skillman
Dressed in mourning,
full of gossip,
like impromptu guests at a Shiva,
they take cherries by the stems,
hold flesh in their loose beaks
and swallow stains
of the first menses and the last.
A multiplication of the old obsessions
here in my own back yard,
not to leave me be
until the tree’s been picked clean.
The starlings have come back,
taken their loud places amid branches,
bits of bad news.
The short tails of commoners
set in a tree.
I can hear their glossy plumage
coaxed toward iridescence, but
formally, as if all the tuxes in the mall
had been rented for this occasion—
as if this were the gist
of a leak at a cocktail party,
and that leak became the subject
of the oldest music: gossip.
I know once the starlings return
they stay on,
a family grown dysfunctional
in the wake of its own bad company.
And I wonder
what disease it is
makes them darken
when they arrive
cleansed with algae from the birdbath,
their multiple heads swiveling,
their black eyes boring into me
like eight-ball hemorrhages.
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