Mozart's Starling

by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

All of us grew up visiting the houses of our friends and their parents, where we learned that there were families that made fart jokes and families that did not. The Mozarts were the sort that did.

Beneath a murmuration, I feel that I am kneeling in an ancient cathedral that ought to be silent but instead whispers overhead with the gathered prayers of hundreds of years of pilgrims. But here is a much greater cathedral—the entire sky—and the prayers are the light brushings of feathers.