Force of Nature

Whoosh! Like a force of nature they arrive…
Starlings. This boisterous, squawking, noisy mob,
strutting, uncouth gang, intimidate all
cautious birds: dunnocks, chaffinch, secret wrens.
 
Spreading across the feeding site, they clear
spilt grain, steal perches from the smaller birds.
Clumsily they ride the feeder’s wild swing –
scattering seed on hooligans below,
stabbing at brave sparrows, bluetits, finches
whose presence threatens to disrupt the show.
 
Leaving as quickly as they came, this flock-
of-one-mind swarms a laden apple tree
to ruin near-ripe fruit with casual pecks.
Then off again, a ragged hurtling mass,
to pounce on fields, string power lines like beads.
 
At day’s close they rise as one: this wheeling,
darkling flock shape-shifts in a setting sun.
Across the land a ritual soon repeats:
sharing a common pulse they turn, turn again,
flocks swoop fields, skirt factories, circle streets
as they follow weird tracks through empty air –
invisible to all but these strange birds.
 
At old Bisham two golfers have to wait
as starlings drive the fairway of the eighth;
like swarming bees they funnel single file,
descend upon an ivy-covered trunk
to disappear completely – swallowed up…
Creating, from a tree and avian clan,
a trembling, cackling sight of the Green Man.

Patrick B Osada

in collection, Choosing the Route, 2010, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-907401-13-8;
first published in South Poetry Magazine, Issue 41