Flock
This flock across the cotton wool,
by wing and shape it’s pigeon flight,
racing maybe, magic map,
because it’s safer in the coop.
Community, those of our own,
safety numbers, flying home,
confuse the buzzards, sparrow hawks,
those preying stoops, wheels, do them harm.
Is it magnetic strip at core,
a cortex driving beak before;
or google maps, the aerial,
a drone before the term was known?
I think not stirs like starling clouds,
those murmurations of the skies,
where birds can mesmerise the eyes,
a final fling before night’s roost.
There is no grace, as V sign geese,
that gentle squawking from above,
nor finches bouncing over fields,
or swallows swooping for the gnats.
Though not the guano, bat haunt cave,
slob curse of statue, building ledge,
why else a hero, hairnet wrapped,
but for the stance, their landscape view.
A swivel head and golden eye,
that rainbow oil of green and pink,
those cheeky beggars in the park
look overfed and overweight.
How like the human race they are,
against the clock, find their way home,
and messing but not cleaning up,
their silhouettes, ’gainst gather storm.
Stephen
Kingsnorth
Stephen Kingsnorth, retired to Wales from
ministry in the Methodist Church with Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces
published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, most
recently Poetry Potion, Ariel Chart, The Parliament Literary Journal, Ink Sweat
and Tears, Visual Verse.