All Together Now Poem by Terri Witek

The tiny scene's in 'concert'
but it's silent—they're just trying

not to eat each other. Beak
locked, with his glare the owl mocks
us, not a hard-rock-candy string
of resting songbirds. What it takes

merely to hold one's place
counts when painting oil on copper,
attributing the skittish past,
or when a flock, rising from one

wire, snaps it like a bowstring
skyward across the only power
line by which two thousand folks
shun winter, flapping closer.