Avian Rhythms
Cynthia Trenshaw
In a single blink of dusk
a thousand starlings incarnate,
black blooms exploding
on the limbs of canyon oak,
without a pause in
chattered conversations
begun wherever they departed
just a breath ago.
They settle soon, as evening does,
feathery still and dark.
Sighing, I gather up my day
and pillow it beneath my head.
Through the night, in throaty voice,
owl softly asks her koan: “who-o,
dear one, are you?”
In meditative pondering
and unremembered dreams
her question occupies my mind
till dawn has drawn the line
where day begins to grow,
and sunlit starlings rise as one,
disperse like scattered seeds
of dark sown into light.
About the author
Cynthia Trenshaw has served as a midwife and a hospital chaplain to the dying. For five years, she offered skilled massage therapy to homeless people on the streets and under the viaducts of San Francisco. She recently retired from her years of service to four State of Washington Superior Courts as a guardian ad litem. Her book, Meeting in the Margins: An Invitation to Encounter Society's Invisible People (She Writes Press), won the 2018 Independent Publisher gold medal in social issues. Her first book of poetry is Mortal Beings (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in over a dozen literary journals.