The east wind cold but the March day dry
and insistent light being dragged away,
I straggled home from allotment hours
and saw an event I'd not seen before.
There was something happening in the sky:
not the mass of a murmuration
but a cruciform swarm, black against blue,
a hundred at least or even two.
Black crosses swooping, spiralling, looping,
gliding and sliding, diving, stooping,
the dark cloud drifting away then back
as the birds intermingled a whirling pack.
Then I noticed that some were leaving,
heading off in different directions,
sometimes a threesome but mainly a pair
heading home to goodness knows where.
How strange, I thought, what's going on
as the avian couples drifted away.
And then it struck me after a pause -
of course, speed dating for jackdaws.
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