Spring song

Flapping and screeching the fledglings list
from their nests. Those little marble hearts

are hammering. How will they learn
their element? Clouds are to sky

as words to thought: brief, dissolving
statements through which we gill,

craving more oxygen, thinner membranes.
Such hunger deep in the wing

for flight. To soar, to swoop, to glide –
how infinite the open mouth of any launched verb.