i walked the levee that
separated the marsh and the river.

a cold front migrating,
not unpleasant,
clouded dense gray,
hardly a call to the winter that
must follow, rather an invitation.

bands of southward fowl
had settle over night,
the sound of them
carried on the wind,
audible a mile below the ditches
i walked towards.

hoping to list, blue teal, scaup,
mallard, canada, red head
and ring necked,
and not a hundred yards away,
one peregrine over head.

at the sound
of my approach,
unseen below the lip of the levee,
ten thousand birds
of a dozen different stripes
took to flight, heaving to the sky,
as if the earth had exploded before me
and for minutes,
great groups departed noisy,
again and again
until the marsh fell quiet.

and there was little remaining
but scattered feathers
floating on the still waters.