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, bol...