Kettles of Raptors

What's that you say:
kettles of raptors?
oh, an image poetic:
that means it's to be believed

A faint roll of thunder
in a cloudless sky, the Valley's weather
caught between mountains, North and South,
always changing

A thousand feet up, raptors:
ospreys, eagles, red tails, harriers
leisurely circling,
tracing patterns in air

They rise on the thermals
in stiff-winged spirals, gaining height
then down and out to gain distance,
another current then down and forward again

A migration pattern:
raptors indifferently together,
for all the world looking like
leaves in a kettle

The thermals a natural magic:
carrying birds
up and down:
wings seldom moving, rarely a flap

The kettle's hypnotic,
powerfully liberating to view:
how would it be to fly on wings tireless,
some unimagined new land discovered and claimed

Some things don't exist without words,
can't exist without utterance:
a kettle of raptors
is one

To hear of a kettle of raptors
is not the same
as to see it,
yet it's the words that give meaning

Words express thinking:
ours and that of others:
but not without ambiguity,
uncertainty,
hesitation

Words express recognition:
a certain conviction,
an emotional assurance:
when we speak,
we express what we think

The question of course:
are we thinking enough