She showed me the cellophane bag with the transparent crumbs
like very small tapioca beads, showed me how to cook them in
a bowl within a pan of simmering water: gently. She handed me
a three-ounce serving in a teacup with a spoon. I sipped the sugar-
sweetened nectar, straining to identify a flavor but there was none.
Sometimes you need to know a little more and say a little less. You
could say this: On Thursday the world sang. Swiftlets dipped into
the evening air, inhaling insects and weaving a complex pattern
across the green: swoop, swoop, swoop. The small arcs of multiple
birds created a predatory net tighter than a window screen—
mosquitoes, gnats, and no-see-ums ensnared. Once sated, the
swiftlets rose in a dark roiling cloud across the sky’s expanse and
sailed over the ridge, free as a silk sheet. This same murmuration
will descend to cave walls to build paper-light nests with their
saliva which fortune hunters will scavenge as a delicacy and a tonic.
Even so small a creature inhaling smaller creatures—even its spit—
is a jewel to someone.
Rachel Barton, poet and writing coach, edits Willawaw Journal and is a member of the Calyx editorial collective. You can trace her poems through several northwest literary magazines and online journals. Her chapbook, Out of the Woods, is available on her website. Happiness Comes is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.