Poetry January/February 2005 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

The Cohort

By Maxine Kumin

Hear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)

It's true: you wake up one morning and they're gone,
the flock of a hundred redpolls who swept in like Huns
with their tiny red caps and black moustaches,
their breasts freckled and stippled like thrushes',
an irruption of redpolls you haven't seen in a decade
and may never see again in the disorderly parade
of your lifetime. How they intimidated the chickadees,
the titmice, even the needle-nosed nuthatches,
batting your year-round faithfuls away from the feeder.
How they chattered, snatching and flapping, rapacious
yet charming in their little red yarmulkes …
you shiver, remembering, refilling the cylinder.
The sunflower seeds glisten like ebony.
O merciless January, where has the cohort gone?

Maxine Kumin is the author of fourteen collections, including the recently published Jack and Other New Poems. She lives in New Hampshire.