Mary Katherine Creel
murmurations
because the predator
is always close,
the body stays in formation
because every cell recalls
missile-shaped silhouettes,
peregrines on the hunt
the body rises, furious,
forms a massive funnel,
billowing and black
the body flocks, responds
as one pulsing organism,
expanding and contracting
both dense and diffuse,
a monster, made whole
until the predator withdraws
the flock disperses,
settles in fallow fields
where the body waits
Mary Katherine Creel‘s poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Paper Rabbit, Tar River Poetry, Avocet, 1932 Quarterly, otata, and Nature Writing. Creel lives in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
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