Two poems and a Haibun, three pictures of starlings, Tuesday of the Cold Moon, watching this year draw to a close

 All that glitters

Starlings stop at the wall,
find my offering of bread
crusts and seeds.
 
In the fading light
they shine as though brushed
with gold leaf.
 
Thanks enough.

                 Anti-twitcher

The term "twitcher", sometimes misapplied

as a synonym for birder ~~Wikipedia

 

Starlings invade each spring

black bullet of rat-on-wings,

short-tailed speckle,

dog-diving blemish,

songbird plagiarist,

dirty hangers-on;

they own the wall

wing-flutter like heartbeat,

that drives the cats wild.

Murmuration

When the man walks into the room, seventy-three women breathe in as one. It had been five weeks since any of us had smelled a man, and he is clean, soap and cedar, a scent that wafts through the barracks, is fresh and dangerous; looking across the aisle at Bridgette, she closes her eyes and inhales deeply as he walks past. But he is not here to bring us back a part of life we have shut out.

Our CC’s, two slight women who both share the same last name, Riley, have become our warped den mothers, here to make us sailors. They are present to help this Chief, who is here to get us ready for an inspection. Today’s lesson is how to make us work as one team, one mindset as we prepare for this assessment and to help us to become that component we’ll need to be as we move on in the Navy. 

His first order is for us to remove our duty belts, thick, white web belts with a metal buckle that we wear as accompaniment to our dungarees. Then he tells us to push our bunks and lockers to the bulk head. As I’m pushing my rack I’m reviewing the order, settling it into my head; this is not to be a review of how to fold our blankets and t-shirts. Then we hit the line, stand at attention as he walks back and forth reading names, looking us in the eye, a movement we do not return. 

He barks, “Do you want to pass this next inspection?” 
As one we call out, “Sir, yes sir!”
“Are you ready to do anything for the sailors in your unit?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Are you prepared to help each other through this training?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Then drop to the deck and give me twenty!”

Bodies drop into push-up position and we call out, “Sir, one, sir! Sir, two, sir! Sir, three, sir!” Raising and lowering as one animal to the bright tile floor. At twenty, we rise, back into our lines, back to attention. He paces past Bridgette again, and she can’t help herself, she breathes in his scent, like succor. I try not to smile, and must duck my head ever so slightly to avoid her look at me across the aisle.

“Is there something funny recruit?” Petty Officer Riley asks, popping around the girl next to me.

“No, ma’am.” I say. She looks me over then walks on, getting people back on the line, stopping to listen to Recruit Garcia’s ragged breathing. Garcia is from Texas, some rural enclave where she lived with her grandparents and younger brothers. Joining the Navy was her grandfather’s idea, he needed her to get out in any way possible. She is barely eighteen and scared. She is so afraid she’ll be sent home, she literally shakes every time we line up. After Riley moves down the room, I whisper, “Deep breaths. Deep breaths.” She clenches and unclenches her fists, but her breathing evens and she relaxes before the next command is barked.

“Duty belts on, straighten those racks and lockers!”

We do as we’re told a blur of motion and then we’re ordered outside into formation, then "let’s do some marchin’, " the word is spit out, hits us like a knife edge; away we go left and right, left and right, flanking, flanking, reverse direction, left and right. All the while being assaulted “you are a unit, you will work as one” from all sides. We are halfway down another pass on the grinder we hear “to the rear march” and as one body we turn.

shadow on the sky
starlings wheel 
wings in one motion