Death Tolls
The atmosphere rings with the bell like calls
of the plover flock, long before they are spotted.
The flight herringbones a grey fedora sky.
Markings of white and coal black weave,
wing-stitched, a blanket maker’s dream.
Sigh makers they close on the beach
at high tide, the horizon shivers the
sand blanches. These ravishing scavengers
light on the tattered edge of wet to dry,
dawdling with the dead.
Plovers are diminutive scroungers, one-legged
dancers, hopping to the pull of tide, dining on
crab-eggs in black-tie and feathered tails, their
gray skull caps lined with a black brow.
Sparrow-small birds dress to the nines.
A feast for the birds, fall crisps, crab moltings,
go on for endless miles. September is beginning
and soon winged ones will fly to sunny shores.
The cold Atlantic will moan for the loss of music,
the unstitched sky will part. The avian choir is off
to the mud flats of Carolina.
First Published Eunoia Review January 2015
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