I’ve gawked at armies’ actions, vast and organized as ants,
been taken with a pride, the strut of lions, and the stalk.
I’ve gaped at flocks that follow as convincible as lambs
and giggled at a gaggle, honking, hissing, just to talk.
I’ve shuddered at a cackling pack of canines as they skulk’d
and shivered at a wave of little lemmings on the move,
took caution at forebodings of a murder gathering,
seen wakes of swarms’ destruction as they hied home to a hive.
I’ve driven by a drove, and underneath a drift and flight.
I’ve stumbled on a sloth, handed a shrewdness an ovation.
I’ve paid to spot a pod, a gam, and swum out to a shoal.
I tried to meet a gang and chanced upon an exaltation.
I read about the fall and nide, the covert and the covey,
while muster makes me doubt the term I am about to use.
A troop turns to a rout, and as a group becomes a bevy,
I wonder if some creatures aren’t better off in zoos.
James B. Nicola, a returning contributor, is the author of six collections of poetry, the latest being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense. His decades of working in the theater culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award.