magpies

Dark shapes flitting past
my office windows catch
my eye, and I watch them
Floating noiselessly to
roof or grass,
sidewalks or skies.
I watch the magpies

and remember dark green
curtains, backed with
glowing white, over
mom's bedroom window
from which I watched
the white curve of driveway
teeming long black tail feathers
ticking up and down
like metronomes, when
I first learned the name
of magpies.

How mom hated them,
little black bodies
banded with white,
crowding on the concrete
and filling the morning
with their coarse cries.
I can almost hear them still,
stubborn, strident--an ugly
and unwelcome surprise,
from those birds that could
be lovely otherwise:
magpies.