The Horde

Father remembered the wild pigeons crowding
Beech groves, mast-rich. The flutter in boughs, the cloud
Darkening all, a hurricane circling and surging.
Eye lost count, ear could not measure sound.
Mind hurled measureless with them, feathered the sky.

Men took the New World harvest. Field was fat.
The heavy ear of corn full-drooped in shuck,
Waiting in frost the hand. The muscadine
Spilled on the clearing. The hickory nut on roof
Rattled in wind. Wild turkeys clucked.
Oak was gable; cedar was firewood; trout
Stirred white the water. And everywhere birds' cries
Flung forever, whirling with hurried leaves,
Clans of the trampled skies that echoed back
thunder of buffalo hoofs, the plunge of fish.

A man of the woods, his laughter undefiled,
Ooze of cider flecked on shirt, the stain
Of walnut on his palm, the reek
Of fur and feather about his coal, the light
Of a wilderness autumn sharpening his cheek.
Threaded the path, his Indian step unheard,
And told a boy: "The pigeons came
Thus, when I was a boy, in autumn time,
And still come on, for wilderness is ripe.

-Donald Davidson