From inside the murmuration, I texted Jo. I am inside these birds, I wrote. I sent a seven-second video. OH!! Jo wrote back. The birds lifted in sequence from their several trees, lit again on several others a little farther down the hill. I felt the air they beat on my face and hands. I felt my heart’s indecorous thud. How many landing blackbirds, and no one missed their branch! Then they were gone. Since they were gone, I started running. I thought to text Jo later: is there a finite number that represents how many times a person might stand inside a flock? What if this is my fourth-to-last time??? But maybe the issue is less a scarcity of murmurations than a scarcity of imagination, of action plans. Running down the ridge, I thought, I need not passively accept my own projected lack of blackbird. I could just go to where the birds are and be still. But where had they gone? At bedtime tonight, my son said, a number is a number is a number and it goes on forever. Ever is a number, he said, and every number also has its word. He asked, what is the difference between the number alone and the word we say for it? It irks, that distance. The birds are darts, are darning needles, are gasps of sorrow, are bickering in the bare trees, are gripping bark, are gorging on seeds, are sparks on the wire, are gone again, lifting as you stumble through their cloud.
