Murmuration
When the birds came, the pavement was
dark with the smell of rain; there was
a quietness to it, to the city laid out waiting like an
awkward lover.
By the railway I watched alone as they were called
to drift across the tracks like leaves,
each bird a grape seed spat by the sun.
I watched from the bridge – could see a child
in a yellow raincoat watch from the other side
and felt the smallness of his hand in mine.
We were the only ones – us and a skeletal
mutt who danced on the tracks with the
maddening itch of chase on its paws.
The train dispersed them – the sound of its
onward rush acute as a woman’s scream –
and I cursed, sucked the air back into my lungs,
hurled a rock. I looked the word up
when I got home, watched it
scratch itself into the page, but it was no use;
the story was no longer mine, but belonged
to its anti-climax, broke itself over its own
muscle and bone.
Elizabeth O’Connor is a postgraduate student in English Literature, researching ecofeminism in the poetry of H.D. She lives in Birmingham, U.K.