Vox Populi
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Alison Luterman: Snowy Plover
Winter twilight on Alameda Beach.
Leslie and I watch
a flock of snowy plovers
make figure eights against a slate horizon.
Their wild wheelings trace the shape
of wonder and grief moving inside us,
pewter, then platinum.
It goes away like that; it comes back.
It carves a black, moving river in the air.
A year since Leslie’s sister went deep
into the green woods,
where she made her plan and carried it out.
Death the only open door
she could perceive.
For the living who are left, the answer’s
indecipherable; a scribble
of bird-wing calligraphy
in dove-gray gloaming.
As we watch, the murmuration turns
and circles back to settle
plump on the sand all together
in a plover convention,
all without a word of consultation,
or any kind of vote,
white breasts gleaming like tuxedo shirtfronts.
Up to our ankles in foaming surf,
we feel the tug of tide pulling back,
while our chilled toes curl
on sucking sand. The world
tilts on its axis. Nothing to hold onto.
~~~~
Alison Luterman is a poet, playwright and teacher who lives in Oakland, California. Her books include In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran, 2020).
Copyright 2025 Alison Luterman
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“Their wild wheelings trace the shape
of wonder and grief moving inside us”
Gasp! What a beautiful poem.
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Thank you, Lisa!
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Love the weaving of birds’ flight and the grief, inexplicable, and yet somehow made beautiful in this poem.
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Yes, I love that trope as well.
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Thank you. This one pulls me.
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Moving, perfect.
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Yes, a perfect elegy.
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So much is unsaid in this poem, which is the throbbing heart of it, and oh, how beautifully what is said is said … lovely and heartbreaking, Ali xo
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Spot on, Rosemerry.
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Gorgeous writing. I especially love “all without a word of consultation,/
or any kind of vote,” reminding us of the self-serving contortions we sometimes put ourselves through to fit into our self-imposed factions.
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Well-said, my friend.
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Just WOW. This poem truly blows me away.
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Me too, Meg. I love Alison’s poems for their passion and clarity.
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Grief. Grief as a bird, as birds — I will find it just a little lighter now that I read this most freeing poem. Sean — thank you for that quote from W. I. Anderson.
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Thank you, Laure-Anne!
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This poem does more than any I’ve ever read (or written) to provide a murmuration above, plus insights into wonder and grief: like the wonder and grief that created its calligraphy inside me when wife Pam died. Thanks for sharing. It paints a picture of the twists and turns of our rendings and re-formations. As Sean Sexton reminds us in his comment, we’ve all had such losses.
And wonder? Alison’s image of the plover convention recalls the time I saw 37 dragonflies rise and resettle onto a tiny little beach of theirs. Part of my human joy was in the counting and the silence of their murmuration.
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Lovely, Jim. A poem in itself.
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The world
tilts on its axis. Nothing to hold onto.
Yes, what a poem!
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Yes, I love this poem.
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Fabulous poem, Alison!
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I love this poem: It reminds me of Mississippi Gulf Coast painter, and keeper of his “Horn Island Log,” Walter Inglis Anderson, who wrote: “Birds are holes in heaven through which we may pass.”
I lost a cousin in the green woods…
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