words like feather and wing take flight

Was lucky enough to receive the pictured 2014 Kei Miller volume from friends the other day ...

... to my shame, I wasn't aware of Kei Miller's poetry; but have thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Here's a favourite from within:


Hymn to the Birds

No, not to the birds
who know better than us
how to hymn their own songs
rather to words

under which they
flock and find their best
arrangements:
to parliaments

of owls: flings of dunlins:
lamentations of swans:
tremblings of finches: charms
of hummingbirds: hills of ruffs:

rushes of pochards: chatterings
of choughs: to walks
of snips: commotions of coots:
gulps of swallows: quarrels

of sparrows: to peacocks
that strut in ostentations: larks that fly
in exaltations: thrushes that crowd
the red-leafed ground

as mutations: also to
the pityings of turtledoves:
the unkindness of ravens: the descents
of woodpeckers: the murders

of crows: a hymn then
not to birds but to words
which themselves feel
like feather and wing

and light, as if it were
on the delicacy of
such sweet syllables
that flocks take flight.

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Kei Miller (1978 - )

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