March 21: Collective Nouns, Psalm 13, and a Little Panic

I had some moments of panic this morning when I realized I was on day thirteen of my Lenten poetry practice.  Even though I don't think of myself as a superstitious person, I don't like to tempt fate.  I will avoid walking under ladders.  I will not pick up a penny on the ground if it's face down.  I panic if a black cat walks in front of my car (mostly because, in the Upper Peninsula, that black cat is more than likely a skunk).  Then there's the whole Biblical bad number thing.  Jesus threw a dinner party for his disciples once, and there were thirteen people at the table.  Things kind of went to hell for Jesus after that, metaphorically speaking.

So this morning, I started praying, hard, for a new poem.  Nothing came to me, or what did come to me was vague and unformed.  I was in a panic by about nine o'clock.  Then I calmed down and started writing in my journal about a bunch of crows I saw in a tree the other day.  I used the term "murder of crows" in what I wrote, and I remembered that there were a lot of other strange terms for groups of animals.  So I googled the term "murder of crows" and came up with a huge list of weird collective animal terms.  Bingo, there was my poem.

Did you know that a group of jellyfish is known as a smack?  Or that a bunch of lapwings is called a deceit?  (OK, I don't even know what a lapwing is, but it's a cool term.)  A clash of bucks.  A chain of bobolinks.  A labor of moles.  A watch of nightingales.  A quiver of cobras.  A piteousness of doves.  A crash of rhinos.  A bob of seals.  A hover of trout.  A bloat of hippos.  A zeal of zebras.

I decided to use the form of a prose poem, which basically means that there are no lines breaks.  The prose poem walks that fine line between poem and flash fiction (stories less than 1000 words long).  It just seemed like the right form for the subject matter.

Saint Marty hopes you enjoy today's offering.  Remember, watch out for black cats with white stripes.

Look out Tippi Hedren!

Psalm 13:  A Murder of Crows

I saw a murder of crows, black as Good Friday, in a stand of sugar maple, their cries a riot of thanksgiving in the gray air.  Beneath them, a wrack of rabbits, too young to flee, mewled and bled, torn and ravaged by a boar sounder.  I heard the pig screams in the woods, full of spring starvation, like I feel when the sugar in my body makes my mind move like a sleuth of bears, all lumber and crash.  In this time between February and April, Ash Wednesday and Easter, the world vacillates.  Snow, heavy as a gam of whales, one day.  Warmth and wind, an ostentation of peacock plume, the next.  This morning, I woke to sleet, ice, crèche-of-penguin weather.  This afternoon, I walk to my office, taste pollen, nectar, a charm of hummingbirds, a flicker of spring.  I know, one day soon, the tomb of winter will open, sun will flood the world.  A rabble of butterflies.  A murmuration of starlings.  An ascension, exaltation of larks.