The barren field lilts in the wind’s fury, as the starlings cackle cacophony in the near distance. I wander onto the barren farm-fields, my dog chasing the mice scattering away in the dead, mown grass.

I want to hear the constant chirping of the small, black, invasive birds, because they may have taken over this frozen northeast, but their invasion is a kindness in comparison to the dead highway barreling the groaning of human destruction in the distance.

We sink into mud and filth and the waste of February and March… the dog falls into damp snow and loses her scent. I watch the black dots on the barren trees, squawking with madness at the storm coming.

And I stop walking, and so does the dog. And all we can hear is the constant crowd of starlings chattering in the grayness. Some distant geese echo their comments, and it is nice. It is calming. It is everything.

A blast barrels out bombastically, boomingly into my ear canals. And the grayness is opened up to the rattling of hell, as I squat in the field with fear. The dog’s hackles meander upward into a forest of terror.

I look and see the farmer, reloading his shotgun. I hear the slow falling of bird bodies clump into frozen ground.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

Suddenly, the screeching of the highway becomes all I can hear.

The starlings bleed into the ground, like so many seeds planting their red roots into the dead soil.

We fled, for hell and cover, to beckon that winter might end, so that its veil of death might push the empty bodies into new life, and that the corn that might grow wouldn’t taste like birdshot.