I didn't know what they were at first, <br />stopped counting at fifteen. <br />Gnarled and bowed their bodies, <br />contorted vicious remnants, <br />they brought to mind the <br />twisted corpses of war <br /> <br />Many speckled bodies, <br />talon-stiff, turned statuesque <br />by a poultice of algal gel and salt. <br />In each pricked tuft of seaweed, <br />two, maybe three birds, lay defeated. <br />A remorseless frost. <br /> <br />Just arrived, confused by an untimely freeze, <br />they headed for south again, <br />struck down by a famine of warm. <br /> <br />Today, feathers flicker from stuck pats, <br />months old now <br />waving a monument <br />to the winter <br />that swallowed starlings.<br /><br />Sonja Broderick<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/frosted-monuments/
