That's a lot of heading south,
I said.

The birds were on a telephone wire
downtown at a festival
they had joined,
a gladiator's match an echo.

I wondered if the birds had any friends.

The sound parted.
I watched several hundred black
butterflies take off.

In seconds they had settled—
were settling along the wire
like magnetic soot, tracing it through the back streets drawing
on the late autumn sky
falling in the evening gold leaves.

Again, after hopping lines to see
the creatures went up in a vapor;
I ducked when they flew at my loft,
my heart smoked when the pendulum missed.

Eventually they did leave. They lifted themselves up
like a giant stalker,
hung in one dizzy
bulb,
made an acrobatic revolution,
and tiptoed off like a cannon.