School Concert

Row upon row,
the children fill the whole
church front and spill
into the choir loft.
Christmas red--
of sweaters and sparkly dresses,
of bow ties, of headbands
catching thick black curles
and white-blond wisps--
shifts like a tree full
of monarch bossom.
Each time the children rise,
the air thrums with the stirring
of two hundred tiny wings.
A song's motions raise
a zephyr through the branches;
bouncing, jubilant, through
kindergarten, first, second,
and third grades (a tossing of hands,
a swaying of bodies); then tapering
through the taller ones within the loft,
whose careful voices crack,
whose anxious ears catch
whispers, even now,
of some long call
up the wind.