Murmuration

Rachel Jeffcoat

I am only telling you about a moment

as I drove him back to school, this child of mine

whose mind mapped in cantatas, whose call

had lit the rafters of our house until his age

and new self-consciousness had made him

quiet. I had not heard him sing for months.

And then a song I loved came on the air

and he, sunk deep in phone screen,

absent and distracted, found

the alto part and words to hand

and sang. How carefully and still

I held my note, as though to keep

a rare and startled creature on my palm.

Then, with louder courage, how he matched

the rising of my voice until we swooped

like flocking birds inside the gold lozenge

of car light. A moment only.

His bowed head gleaming bronze

above the tiny bloom of raw new spots.

No need to dwell on how I held that to me

in the weeks that followed. Nor that,

several times again, I chose the time and song

and waited, bated breath, for a bird

that did not come.

RACHEL JEFFCOAT has been widely published, including in The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review and Under the Radar. She was commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet, Familiar, appears in Primers VIII (Nine Arches 2026), and her debut collection, There Is No Word Alive For What I Am, will be published in early 2027 by The Emma Press.