Soaring Serenity

Cowbirds or starlings, I’m not sure what it was that we witnessed last week soaring in the high desert country of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

This sunset ritual is not to be believed. Masses of these birds swoop in and out in exquisite harmonizing and mesmerizing patterns for about ten minutes before they settle down for the night.

This is what happy hour looks like if you’re a bird.

The divine intelligence that is at work keeping these creatures from crashing into each other is simply breathtaking.

Here’s the two-minute video I made of this magic event. Turn up the sound on your device and allow these mystical murmurations to lift and transport you too. You can also just close your eyes and feel the calm generated by their whooshing sounds. Like being at the ocean.

And the complete your experience, may the poem below by Mary Oliver lift you even higher.

Starlings In Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

From: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Copyright ©: Mary Oliver

Art: Yuko Osaka