The colored ribbons of their voices, tossed up to air and arched back by gravity the fanned tails splays of ebony and squabbling male squawks the strutting about over the stubbled grass of the park-to-be-built someday these enliven the miles of roofs all at the same pitch all of the same gray shingle above houses all of the same mottled brick lined up like the numbers in the good accountant’s ledger. We were all encoded long ago. We dance each spring just as we should stepping out our rituals to a drumbeat more distant than I will ever hear.