Seagulls as Snow

Maybe it was a field of corn. Maybe parsley.
I am a stranger in Seattle. I don’t know

these winters, what lies dormant. What matters
is how I saw the seagulls in that field,

how it took a minute to gather that blanket
of white was not snow, but birds stirring

in the way birds do. Not snow. Not snow
incongruously melting. No, something alive

with wings, able to gather, fly off, leave,
without a second thought, what isn’t needed.

 

 

*

 

 

Where I Was the Day I Heard Colony Collapse Disorder Was Added to the Dictionary

Behind a strip mall,
outskirts of town,
a half-wall of concrete divides,
where the hull of us bumps against
the what’s left when we are gone.
I walk here daily, reprieve
from the office’s arctic air.
I’ve seen the crumbled coils
of bedsprings, piles of tires, TVs,
become a base for honeysuckle,
the offices of bees. Most days,
I just breeze by, breathe, take note.
But today, I sit on that wall,
gangly as Humpty, my feet
dangled over the buzz, watch
a crow land its heft on a gutter,
try belonging less to this whorl.

 
 
~~~
Michelle Hendrixson-Miller lives in Columbia, TN. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte where she served as poetry editor on the inaugural issue of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in many publications including Josephine Quarterly, Poems and Plays, The Moth, Adirondack Review, Still, The Fourth River, One, Harbor Review, Mudfish, and Thrush. Visit her online at https://mraehendrixsonmill.wixsite.com/mhmpoems.