Murmuration
written by: Paul Thwaites
Starling symphonies perform the sky,
Effervescent from ferment trees,
Woke to Mobius heaven an acrobatic joy,
Rejoiced in clamour, dip and swirl,
High to chattered tumbling of air,
They leaven,
Off over tree tops, helical, adoring,
The heart to follow, soaring.
In this heart scarved,
I cut my dovetail love,
Watch wind, its brushed calligraphy,
Tossed, turned to blow,
Dark choreography.
Now distant twists in the danced eye,
Pasodoble freckles in assembly,
Raucous cacophonies of murmuration,
Dust in distillate song,
Wild branded to Nirvana,
On a tangoed sky.
Ranked shoals that fly,
Birded in air, to take their medium,
Fated as Isadora’s twisted silks,
Dip, wheel, fall,
Till prone sigh waves,
And sleep in lees of trees.
Leaving to feel,
That suddenness of being alone,
Unseen twitter of the tenement,
Wittering, mundane,
Bursts the bubble of such ecstasy,
Clouds bereave in mourning day,
As words remembered in the mind,
No lips can say.
- A Plum for Oxford Don - November 17, 2024
- A Trilogy of Sea Poems - July 29, 2024
- Single Bird - May 2, 2024