Last night’s
hazy dream, was
it a big rig or freight
train we almost crashed into? You
behind

the wheel.
Me shouting your
name to turn it or do
whatever it is you drivers
do to

avert
collisions. I
felt no motion sickness
the way I would awake inside
a large

starling
murmuration—
a half million beating
wings undulating across the
dusk sky.

It’s not
their fault they’re here.
Blame the Shakespeare-obsessed
drug maker who released 60
of them

into
Central Park in
1890. And please
do not call that tiny saw-whet
owl found

inside
that giant spruce
a stowaway. It was
her home before it was chopped down,
tossed on

a truck
to become the
Rockefeller Center
Xmas tree. Refugee is more
like it.