Friday poetry challenge: pictures from a murmuration

It starts with a whooshing sound like water sweeping over a waterfall or waves rushing ashore. Above my head a small flock of starlings swoops past and joins up with another group and another until soon a phalanx of starlings fills the sky, wheeling and massing and making shapes that move smoothly from rhomboids to ovals to multi-armed whirligigs.

How many starlings make a murmuration? Surely thousands--some say hundreds of thousands. They gather faithfully just before sunset at this time of year, flocking in with a whoosh from every direction and then joining up to create shifting shapes in the sky. Still photos can't capture the motion and even videos available online (for instance, here) leave out the rushes of wind and sound that accompany each startling transformation.

They gather each autumn at the same spot along the Muskingum River, sky-dancing for a time before finally settling into a thick copse of trees, where they chatter shrilly for 30 minutes or an hour before settling into silence. I'm standing a few feet from the copse, but they may as well be invisible--aside from an occasional shadowy movement, the only indication that thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of starlings have simultaneously settled among those trees is the sound they make.

And what a sound! I grasp at metaphors: like the world's biggest orchestra warming up before a performance, or like the audience chattering and rustling and cell-phoning before settling into their seats. A few shrill calls stand out but it's mostly one chaotic roar rolling in waves like radio static with the volume turned all the way up. 

And then they stop, suddenly, as if the conductor has stepped up and tapped his music stand. The silence is immediate but lasts less than a minute before they're chattering again, and then the volume gradually declines as darkness falls. When the sound ceases, it feels as if a physical object has been removed, as if someone has plucked earphones off my head or knocked down a wall separating me from the rest of the world. It's impossible to convince myself that the starlings are still there even though I know I saw them wheeling in the sky, saw them descend into the trees all at once as if obeying a field marshal's sudden command. 

No poetry or picture is sufficient to convey the wonder of the murmuration, but that doesn't mean I won't try:

Starlings wheel, whirr, whoosh,
bank and turn, sit and chatter. 
Darkness falls. Silence.

Your challenge: poetry of any sort encapsulating a moment of wonder.