Words are Birds

Her words were light as feathers
               from Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Odyssey

Words are birds--

Sometimes brash as starlings
moving in beneath the eaves of your house without asking--

Or melancholy as mourning doves whistling,
 perched overhead on telephone wires--

Or quick as bright hummingbirds
darting madcap among the trumpet vines--

Or harsh as a murder of crows,
their raucous conversation splitting open the morning air--

Or pleasing as a lark, singing solo to no one
and everyone in a mountain's meadow--

I have no favorites.
Let them all come home to roost with me.