Flight Among the Olives

Olive olive olive evening
trees quietly debating
whether they are calm
or merely relaxed, the trees
spaced in rows like repeated
punctuation for tranquility,
leaves fluttering silver
the opposite of coins
down the hillside from where
we are breaking bread,
my children's tiny heads
peering above the table
to whisper please and thank you.
I peer down into the valley below us.
We were once birds, I tell them.

Jim Daniels