Unless you’re a birder, “kettling” may be word you’re not familiar with, an obscure word that is both title and subject of a poem by Lisa Timpf of Simcoe, Ontario. You may still want to look it up, but Lisa illustrates the meaning for us in a picture of words.

Kettling

no
vessel of heart or hand
large
enough to encompass
this
kettle of migrating raptors
riding
the updraft
coasting,
in lazy-winged spirals,
while
we, like admiring ants,
stand
clod-like and rooted to the earth
so
far below

sharp-taloned,
keen-eyed
afire
with a fierce and magnificent beauty
they
speckle the overcast sky
their
cries harsh and primal
their
gyrations an echo
of
the enigmatic circle
of
life
itself

     Lisa
Timpf
     Simcoe,
Ontario