Patrick B. Osada
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 flockof-
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.
Page(s) 21
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The