Rochelle Nameroff The Grackles You can stare a long time and not know it,       you can open your mouth many times, the stare coming out of it— It is the house so shuttered against the wind       you can hear the wood beams straining, the house so small against the sky that it appears like a door to a larger house       you can't see the roof of, and above the house so many grackles they look like gnats, or like pores       on the terraced skin of an orange. You can almost taste the orange's sweetness the way the eye can smell the oncoming storm       or see the color of thunder in the air, its blossoms metallic and birdlike— So many, to count them in their graceful sweep       is to get dizzy all at once, a dizziness that is like letting go of the universe. First the sky gives up its protective arch of light.       Then the birds disappear, taking the thunder, leaving the air a cavern of cries. The house, now roofless, is a family of two, who stand       in night's passageway. They are blind with the world coiled inside their fingerprints. What the mother sings to the cradle       goes all the way down to the coffin so many times that the song is the universe, and those who sing it—grackles, mother, child,       and the small house with its ache of perspective— sing it gladly, their voices now and then stopping.

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