News clip:  Fireworks sent (the blackbirds)
flying from their roosts. They died of blunt force trauma.

“When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, …
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?”
	— Gerard Manley Hopkins

Plummeting from an Arkansas sky         
three thousand red-winged blackbirds
crash and break,
the unintentional spectacle                               
reminding that human celebration
so often augurs others’ deaths.

Imagine these birds roosting peacefully
when suddenly the sky 
bursts open with blinding flares
and terrifying noise.
  
They’re poor night flyers:                                
flying downward                                              
they crash blindly                                         
into cars, houses,                         
each other, 
three thousand of them
dying of blunt force trauma
according to the autopsies.

We place silhouettes in windows
to keep birds from crashing into glass.
When will we ever give up fireworks
for the peace of roosting birds?