I catch, am caught in the winged weather above food court & student union. I listen to the grackle orchestra of unrelenting shriek. I study the blur of their long-tailed swerving, their bodies like comets, frenzied commas, yet unable, finally, to mark, to contain the wide blue Texas sky. Still, they try. Every beak & claw, every uncalm feather tries, as if the sky were the only fact left, as if the grackles have been told to memorize it, as if someone, someday, will ask them to speak it, this long blue sentence.
