Two Poems

by James Lilliefors

Starlings                          

This morning, thousands of starlings

lifted off from the field outside my window,

like a vast self-organized organism.

There is intoxication in a crowd,

Huxley wrote: to be one of many

doing the same thing. Doesn’t matter

what it is, anything will serve.

Deep down,

we share the same longings;

higher up, we long

to share something more.

“This is this,” Robert DeNiro said in a movie once.

“This ain’t something else. This is this.”

Try explaining that to a starling.

In the Leaving

(Ode to Jim Beam)              

The last time I had you inside me

was ten years ago today,

when I decided to ignore the next day’s

knocking – as familiar by then

as drain-water flushing through wall-pipes,

whisking away all doubt and resolve.

You’ve come knocking since

to remind me – how lovely the late light

looked through your golden-brown mist,

how delicious the cool cavern-y air tasted,

soaked with your heady vapor.

What it did to the soul the next day.

We can celebrate together if you wish,

though I will not welcome you in.

Knowing now who you are, what you did.

But we may reminisce from a distance

just the same, recalling what we went through

together, the good and the ill.

Then I will again find life in the leaving

and celebrate what remains.

*Originally published by Roi Faineant Press

BIO: James Lilliefors is a poet, journalist, and novelist, whose writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Third Wednesday, Door Is A Jar, The Washington Post, The Plentitudes, Salvation South, The Miami Herald, and elsewhere. He is a former writing fellow at the University of Virginia and was a 2024 Best of the Net poetry nominee. His first poetry collection will be published in October.