Ian le Tourneau: Murmuration

Murmuration: Starlings on the St John River

Flashmob. Wingbeats. Murmuration.

The starlings’ policy is beauty, written

in fluid cursive across impending dusk.

A love letter in blank verse from the folio.

The sky is their amusement park,

their rollercoaster, their tilt-a-whirl.

Their flight, pliable like toffee: pulled

apart, stretched to breaking, but melded

back to a centre. A chainmail of feathers.

Murmur: a recurring sound in the heart;

softly spoken roar, as the Greeks put it.

Murmuration: the sound our heart improvises

now as it cartwheels. The birds soaring

over the cobalt bolt of river.

Like the sublime notes only Coltrane could hit,

in “Out of This World.”

A falcon stalks the border

of the starlings’ cyclonic city-state,

reminding us—not that so much

around us is out of synch,

but that the shapeshifting of a summer sky

is purposeful with each billow and surge.

And these ingenious plot twists

up there keep the falcon guessing

until, like the convincing snap of

a tablecloth, the flock disperses.

And we disperse, too, though transformed,

the syncopated beat of wings carried on.

Murmuration: twilight’s civil service.

Ian le Tourneau