Illusion

The leaves on the tree burst upwards like dark scattershot, then compressed and wheeled in perfect formation,

not leaves at all, but starlings who just the moment before had cloaked the bare branches in faux verdancy.

An illusion to rival the chorus line girls of Hollywood’s Golden Age who could kick their legs and tilt their heads to form a flower or a waving flag;

but the starlings uncoached by any impresario, though they may have answered some inner call to perch, to preen, to puncture the sky with their synchronous wings , dazzle us just the same.

The whole being more than the sum of its parts. More than the sight of gleaming birds cartwheeling across the sky.