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Fragments of Frost and Fire - Episode 9 - The Ones Who Gather

It was only yesterday that I discovered a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope, and I had to put that in a poem. So I started thinking about all the beautiful, strange, and poetic names we give to gatherings of animals—murders, parliaments, flamboyances—and how each one carries a kind of quiet unity. This poem is what came out of that wondering, and maybe a little loneliness too. 

The Ones Who Gather

A kaleidoscope of butterflies,
turning air into stained glass,
wings brushing wings in a hush of color—
they move as one,
a prayer held aloft by sunlight.


A murder of crows
circles the edge of dusk,
black-threaded thoughts
sewn into the hem of sky.
Even in omen, they arrive together.

A parliament of owls
sits in the cathedral of trees,
silent but listening,
wisdom not as one voice
but many held in counsel.

A pod of dolphins—
spindrift and shimmer,
laughing through salt and wave,
mapping the world
with echoes answered.

A mischief of rats
in the alley’s forgotten script,
bold in the shadows,
writing survival
in footprints no one follows.

A flamboyance of flamingos
leans into the marsh light,
all awkward elegance
made holy in the mirror of water—
not alone, never alone.

But I—
no murmuration to move with,
no swarm to hum beside,
no tangle of fur or feather or fin
to fold myself into.

Just the echo of a question
unasked by the herd,
unheard by the pack,
and unanswered
by the sky.

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