High above our neighbor's house
a flock of cedar waxwings,

egg-sized birds (must be hundreds)
gathering, resting, waiting

to take wing as one across
the equator. When they sing,

it's a crystalline morse code --
the bare live oak crowded, sounding

their own password primeval, 
their own kind of belonging.

Now they've left, replaced by spring,
green canopy delicate,

its too brief default setting
before the summer descends.
 
Somewhere else, those same birds sing.