Commuters

— Photo by Schnäggli

“As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,

A landscapeful of small black birds, intent

On the far south, convene at some command

At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone….’’’’

— From “An Event,’’ by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning poet and teacher who spent most of his life in New England.