Poetry Friday: A Murmuration of Starlings, and Mary Oliver, and Updike

This is a murmuration of starlings. 

I need say nothing about it. 

Just watch. 

This is from Mary Oliver's "Starlings in Winter":

... Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

(Read the whole poem here.)

~~~~~~~

And this is from John Updike's "The Great Scarf of Birds":

...And as
I watched, one bird,
prompted by accident or will to lead,
ceased resting; and, lifting in a casual billow,
the flock ascended as a lady’s scarf,
transparent, of gray, might be twitched
by one corner, drawn upward and then,
decided against, negligently tossed toward a chair:
the southward cloud withdrew into the air.

Long had it been since my heart
had been lifted as it was by the lifting of that great
scarf.

(See the whole poem here, in The New Yorker archives.)

~~~~~

And, simply because I love them, here's a list of collective names for animal groups.

I like to make up new ones, too. Let's see ...

A collective name for poets? I suggest a pentameter of poets.

For bloggers ... hmmm. I think I'll call us a blather of bloggers.

For readers, a rondeau of readers.

Other ideas?

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is at Teaching Authors.

~~~~~

Updated to note:
The above link to The New Yorker shows a different version of the poem -- an earlier one, I assume. The version with the final stanza I included can be found in Updike's Collected Poems, 1953-1993.

~~~~~

Updated again to add Tanita Davis's link to this Youtube video of Elbow performing Starlings.