Pentecost
The night came alive with blackness:
an empty tree
feathered with hundreds of blackbirds,
each cocked to spring.
And spring they did,
when
sensing for the first time my power,
I clapped my hands.
The sound of their flight was an explosion,
a rushing wind
that swept up and out and around me,
sucked me in
and carried me out of myself.
I was quite young
when alone in black-feathered darkness
I first heard tongues.