colorful variety of leaves, image by Arek Socha, on Pixabay
MURMURATION
An iridescence of starlings
shape shifts over the salt marsh
at sunset, like dancers tying a
seamless ribbon around God’s
pink-packaged earth
*
LISTEN
Autumn leaves whisper
as they descend to the churchyard
to weave a colorful quilt for
my grandmother’s grave.
Soon the maples and the oaks,
their naked arms extended,
their roots holding her in tireless embrace,
will call snow from the sky, and sleep.
Brian Kates is a longtime newspaperman and holds a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. His book, The Murder
of a Shopping Bag Lady, was a finalist for Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Recent poetry has appeared in Third Wednesday, Common Ground Review, Ekphrastic Review, and other journals. He lives with his wife in a house in the woods in the lower Hudson Valley.