Poem 424

A group of elderly men … in their eighties no longer any fat men amongst them … did the fat ones die or shrink … I wanted to capture how their voices are pitch shifted by age … the sound of a treeful of starlings just on nightfall …

( I like the image of the neck flap providing a hand grip for the Grim Reaper … )

Old Men

The men are chattering like starlings
voices full of the chirrup
of constricted throats
a weathered lap at the back of each neck
as purchase for death

these are the thin men
C for cancer
not coronary
their high shrunken discussion
speaks to me of birds
birds birds
and night swarming through the tree