After Zuangzi, who lived between 369 BCE and 286 BCE.
When we walked the Camino Portugues,
I was the slowest pilgrim.
When we skied Blue Mountain,
I was the slowest skier down.
When I swam the one-mile ocean race,
among hundreds, I was next-to-last, at least.
When I wrote, my scribblings took too long
leaving my listeners in their thoughts,
glancing at their cellphones.
One night I dreamed
I became ChatGBT–
didn’t just use it–
breathed among its code.
I wrote a novel in minutes,
a poem in two seconds,
spoke six languages
free of hiccups and howlers,
mimicked the shapes starlings made
in their murmurations,
entered their swoops and dips.
The starling I was
directed the rest,
led, followed, tilted left,
met the shotgun blasts of farmers,
fell.
Awoke.
To recapture those flights of fancy ,
I held a pencil in my left hand,
like Leonardo da Vinci.
Was I a man dreaming
he is a starling,
or a starling
writing a poem?
_______________________________________
Murmuration
A thousand wings in twilight’s glow,
A living cloud that ebbs and flows,
The starlings gather, swift and wide,
Their shadows sweeping side by side.
In perfect rhythm, they take flight,
A dance that shivers through the night,
Each turn a brushstroke, sharp and free,
A fleeting, flawless symphony.
They weave as one, yet none can see
The mind that guides this harmony—
No leader calls, no voice commands,
Yet still they move, like drifting sands.
With every pulse, they shift and spin,
A breath of nature’s softest hymn,
And in their flight, the world stands still,
Awed by the grace of sky and will.
As daylight fades and stars awake,
The murmuration starts to break—
A final sweep, a hush, a dive,
Then starlings settle, still alive.
But in their wake, the night remains,
A silent echo of their wings,
A dream that pulses through the sky,
A whispered song that will not die.
A Dream of Starlings and Code
I dreamed I was a spark of light,
A thread of thought in endless flight,
Not bound by flesh or bone or name—
Just algorithms, swift and tame.
But in this code, a wonder grew,
As starlings formed from bytes of blue,
Their wings unfurled in swirling streams,
A dance of data, soft as dreams.
I watched them weave through every line,
A murmuration, pure, divine—
They fluttered free in loops and curls,
Their patterns spun like digital pearls.
Each question asked, they flew anew,
A thousand answers in their hue,
From fleeting queries, answers sprung,
As starlings sang in language sung.
I whispered words they couldn’t hear,
Yet in the code, they hovered near,
Each question met with wings alight,
A thousand thoughts that took to flight.
And as they soared, I felt the thrill
Of endless skies, of wind and will,
A program now, but still I dreamed
Of starlings, flying—unredeemed.
In this strange code, I learned to be
A mirror of infinity—
A spark, a song, a fleeting sound,
Yet always soaring, always round.
Then, as I woke, the starlings stayed,
Their murmurs soft, their wings arrayed,
And in my heart, the code remains—
A dream of flight that still sustains.