Agitation Wave
Starlings fly in the physique
of a palm tree or hanging traitor
to avoid avian predators.
You hold back to catch them, en route
to the village. If a village
becomes disreputable, is it still the same village?
To avoid the predator miraculous,
the sorcerer love, ordinary townsfolk
coalesced like raindrops into a dark cloud,
mimicked their neighbours, acted out cruelties
they could not have perpetrated alone.
A predator scourged and speared.
How do you recognise the semi-transfigured
on the road home? At first,
you do not. You no longer trust love,
do not believe it to be what you had.
But when you see it, you desire it
more than you desire your own breath.
It is too late by then,
but you witnessed a miracle.
And, now, here comes the murmuration,
an abundant obscuring of all the light
the sorcerer took with him.
Remember that light, how you bathed in it?
The road is dusty, your skin
riddled with dust. Heart given, and purified,
you will always be clean.
Carl Griffin is from South Wales. His first poetry collection, Throat of Hawthorn, was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2019. His book-length poem, Arrival at Elsewhere, written for charity with the help of one hundred poets, was published by Against the Grain Press in 2020
Amethyst Review 