First Post, First Poems

So for my first post I will start from the beginning.

Shoals of Starlings is the title from one of my very first poems, which I wrote probably around 15 years ago? So it seems an appropriate place to start.

After a hiatus of 5 years it has now been a year of tentatively returning to writing poetry again. One thing I found myself doing is to try and write past poems from memory. I thought it would be interesting to place the original and the remembered side by side; to see how time have distorted their imagery and meaning.

Although in the case of these poems it wasn’t so much a re-imagining of the old poem, it was a new poem calling to the old one; a declaration that I had started writing again.

Okay, so I know officially it is known as a starling murmuration, which is a fantastic phrase in its own right but I am a sucker for alliteration (a poetic pleasure I am not ashamed of). A shoal describes the shifting formation so aptly I feel.

Original

Shoals Of Starlings

 

Coursing through the channels of my wrists

sprinkling stars from their headdresses

wash my face from cupped hands full of flight

hold you close in my glittered arms

so you can feel the shimmer

as the shoals of starlings

change direction within me

 

 

The declaration to begin writing again

Shoals Of Starlings

 

I miss the shoals of starlings

slip sliding above the city

their feathers like flints

striking the streetlamps

keeping the sun ticking over