I. 
It begins with a downward plunge like millions of meteors from heaven. Sky swelling from the buzz of descending wing flaps. Lines like coils of a gigantic sky-serpent. Oak tree limbs snap from the unceasing weight of birds, a million freckled constellations blurring. Individually, golden-green feathers preened, cinnamon-rose breasts sigh. Stomachs engorged with beechnuts, or summer berries, worms, or salt. Enlarged muscles, stiffened ribcage primed to wander. Carmine-red beady eyes search, bodies crowded close, a billion undulating bones contorting together forming God. 

II.
It blossoms like a sun-blotted cloud-bird creation. Children scream at cataclysmic light evaporating, women hide. The nameless sound of approaching thunder. People fall, gravel bits digging into kneecaps, mumbling prayers to God. It splinters when swollen flocks are relentlessly shot. Limitless bodies plummet in a freefall. Or they are trapped in nets, their homes torched. Asphyxiated from burning sulfur, babies bursting open on collision with the ground. Attacked with rakes or pitchforks. Poisonous whiskey-soaked corn shoved down gullets. When they hit the ground, it sounds as though every child rattles a bag full of marbles. 

III.
It collapses when a wild soul is shot dead on Salt Creek Road. A little boy squinting up in the blue-gray sky, fingertip prepared on trigger. Lonesome wings appearing like an isolated shooting star. A fading carcass carried, blooddrops like confetti on grassblades. Placed in a cardboard casket, hands cut the body open from the seams. Skinned, becoming a bunch of feathers and muscle. Empty body stuffed with artificial life. Fraudulent perch prepared with arsenic, preventing beetles from chewing sewn skin. Eyeballs extracted, transforming into a husk of wilderness. Pitch-black shoe buttons placed in the eye-crevice. Rigid bird-shell perched, button-eye vacantly searching. 

IV.
It ends with Martha. Perpetually caged. Shackled flight, wing expansion powerless to orbit open sky. Years of controlled confinement. Sand grains pelted to awaken the one-woman spectacle. Attempting appropriate movements to appease hungry eyes. Leashed wings aching for an unfamiliar home. September is where birds go to die. Corpse snatched from cage, hauled between hands. A stranger with delicate fingers pinching her coral-bright legs, shoving body in water, a post-mortem drowning. Her body soon encased in ice, transferred to be skinned, pinprick needles enter her, internal being dissected, remains eagerly prodded, rags and sawdust stuffed to resurrect bird-form. Molted feathers lodged back in the skin. Suspended in a manufactured performance, the embodiment of extinction herself.