Murmuration by Gill Horitz

Gill Horitz has worked in the arts for many years. Her poetry has been published in magazines, including: Writing Women, Mslexia, Smiths Knoll, Frogmore Papers, Tears in the Fence,and a short story in Cheatin’ Heart – Women’s Secret Stories Anthology (Serpents Tale 1998).   

Gill was short-listed in the Bridport Prize, 2011 and Cinnamon Press will publish her first Pamphlet, All The Different Darknesses, in 2019. She attends a poetry group in Dorset where she lives, led by Paul Hyland.

www.stateofplayarts.co.uk

www.wimbornecommunitytheatre.co.uk

 

Murmuration


 

We were in the reed beds

waiting for starlings

when the phone rang

and her voice was blown

by the blue air into my ear,

speaking about the past

which wouldn’t leave her,

a kind of punishment,

she was saying, to be unknown

or alone, the wind

made it hard to hear.

 

I was still listening at four-thirty

when the air chilled, fell inert

as birds appeared

on the same wavelength

as dusk, accumulating

in swathes, each one

dependent on the nearest.

 

If she could see what starlings

make of themselves, bound

by their own instinct.

 

Gill Horitz

 Video and final image: January, 2017 at Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset; Photo: Gill Horitz

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