Glass Darkly

On the simplest of days when you ride in silence
with a friend in his car along the coastal route
where the landscape passes beyond your window,
gray bands of brush, field, sea, fog, and a sudden
flock of birds leaps as one body into the air,
crosses the road, swerves into another direction
a flash of light across countless winged bodies
then veers in shades again, what makes the spirit
soar to meet them, an interval of freedom
from the body's bounds, and though you ride on
retain for some brief time the loftiness of wings?
There must remain in us a remembrance
of former things that like a sparrow at a window,
sees his image, flies to the glass again and again.

Sally Ashton
Copyright © 2002

Sally Ashton, MFA student at Bennington College, has had previous work published in Reed Magazine.