From This Dancing Ground of Sky: The Selected Poetry of Peggy Pond Church

And on and on them came
through the pale afternoon,
long strands and ribbons,
arcs and curving wedges,
hieroglyphs in motion,
staves of music.

We looked upward again and again and saw them flying
and as they flew they called to one another;
the call sounded
through those myriad throats like the voice of a single being
half-angel and half-bird,
a wind sound, a water sound,
a sound as golden as honey.
We listened and felt ourselves enchanted
beyond our mortal sense.

All afternoon the sky was our dancing ground.
The long song rose and fell.
The convergent lines formed circles.
We were children again in ring around a rosy
immersed in a mystery.
In the end we must all fall down
and down in a slow spiral out of heaven
and be ourselves again.

Earth and our stolid bodies claimed us.
We leaned against stones.
The white clouds were slate clean.
On either side the cliffs were voiceless sandstone.
All afternoon the cranes kept flying over
aligning themselves with music.
As the sound ebbed we spoke wistfully of dying,
when our time came, into such ecstasy.