I recently found this video on youtube of starlings in one of those fluid formations. I don't know if I can really describe it, except that they are flying over a marsh, and whatever their rhythm, they appear to collapse into themselves, and to form what looks like some solid object. And that object, as soon as it drifts into itself, drifts away from its center, or coerces to form another object. I know it's a common sight. And I know every time I get to see it I'm captivated. One time, when I was living in Virginia, driving toward the Newport News Tunnel, I saw a rope of these starlings flying over the highway. They were going north. And there was no end of them that I could see.
Sally Keith's poem "Lullaby on the Marsh," in Issue 09 of A Public Space, is not about starlings, or birds. The poem is about Achilles. And it is about motive. And the way motive moves inside Achilles, sometimes solidifying, sometimes just drifting, not necessarily aware of a purpose, but acting, still, with purpose, like the men who prepare their houses for winter. For me, Keith is able to move language in her poem like those starlings. I am always aware of some solidity present as the impulse of the poem. "Shape of the wave underneath the wave" she says toward the opening of the poem. She touches that shape in different ways.
It's what I am always impressed with in her first book Design. Keith writes with an acute awareness of what matters in a scene, and she keeps that focus very present for me, even making it feel as though that concept, that focus, is a solid thing in my chest. And her poem is there to help me understand this complexity as a denseness. However quickly it might morph into another denseness.
Related Links:
YouTube video of starlings
A Public Space
Design
Dwelling Song