Starlings

 If you haven't payed attention to flocks of starlings in flight, you have been missing out. I'm not sure there's anything I'd rather watch. When you tally up starlings and leaves fluttering down onto the water and rain blowing through street lights in the wind, and schools of fish and snow sinking from the clouds to the earth, and fields of poppies standing by the roadside, and banks of fog rolling in and whisping past, and families of ducks and geese dabbling, waddling, calling and flying, and trees bending and shaking in a storm, and sunlight trickling and filtering through it all, and water misting and flying and falling and rushing through the air and through our bodies and above and beneath and through and across the earth, and sparks and woodsmoke flying up into the night, and herds of goats wandering down the valley in the distance, and phosphorescence lighting up waves and beaches, and the stars and moon shining from behind strips of cloud, and fireflies dancing above a black lake and lighting up trees like Christmas in the dead of an august night, and bats swirling up into the twilight, I don't even know what you get. Heaven. I know nature and life can be hard and cruel, but it's difficult for me not to believe in grace and goodness in a world filled with so much reckless beauty.