Winter Birds

Beth Konkoski

January lets me see through the ribs, more space than growth on each morning’s walk.  And for today, from some magician’s hat, swirls of black birds gather and disperse, unbroken code for the day.  Their message urgency and repose, scattered play and tucked in work.  The concert of knowing– where to land, when to lift, which glossy spin to execute.  I study and try to locate pattern, some knowledge to hold like a hot coal.  They shift always a measure ahead, beat me to their geometry each time as they fill the sky with midnight curves.  This winter flocking is a valley of sound pitched from rooftops and tree branches, deft, collective; they are hunters and pioneers of this January light.  Their angles and loyalties a language I long to translate. 

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Virginia with her husband and two mostly grown kids. Her work has appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Potomac Review, and Saranac Review. She has two chapbooks of poetry, Noticing the Splash with BoneWorld Press and Water Shedding  with Finishing Line Press. A collection of her fiction, A Drawn and Papered Heart, won the Acacia Prize for Short Fiction in 2023 was published by Kallisto Gaia Press in 2024.