In Judgement What

Belted by recoil of our own discontent,
our faces read like trampled flower beds.
Would you reprimand distraction
toward that swarm of starlings
converged on a treetop, screaming?
Not daydreams, but dreamy attention,
or at least attention to dreaming --
but for a long moment, only
the starlings screaming.

— 1993, from Poems