The things you’ve seen
since last you saw yourself:

how have their little deaths
changed the way your long wings
move in circles
that you then fall through
as you must,

you, who did not understand
when the others fled
to warmer shores
and stayed in the frigid
of this: our winter.

You, the last call
of the last magpie
frozen in mid-flight
yet the gaudy trophies
of which you’ve heard it all

are nowhere,
gone like many legions
of birds descending
into an October sunset.