A flocked tapestry

When we were young, we’d all flock to church.
That was in our Wladiwostok days, when flocking was such fun.
The whole flock would be gathered around the pastor and then drink.
It was a like a huge cloud when the flock dissipated.

Just like a flock they all went and bought Tamagotchis and, later on, Toyotas.
As it happens in these flock days, the music changes fast and furiously.
I can’t easily tell the black sheep from a flock, can you?
And bees? You call them a flock? Geese? Fish? A school? That is surprising, the Armenian said.

He and his flock had come from Yerevan in the early 1900s, before the genocide.
Back then flocks were more numerous and mottled.
Cesar, it is known, would bathe his face in a morning flock.
And Napoleon loved to have his hand in his flock coat.

Rock Hudson often wore flocks in his movies.
Even Winston Churchill was known to flock now and then.
Today, off course, flocking is forbidden except outside,
but as I speak laws are being elaborated to ban external flocking.

“That was so sweet, the way you gently flocked me on the mouth
that night,” Sarah said. “It was that gentle flocking that made me fall in love with you.”

– James Steerforth (© 2011)

Written for Sunday Scribblings and flock.

The word did not ignite a spark. So first I wasn’t going to do any flocking, but then it occurred to me to do a sort of John Ashbery treatment. As in some of the poems in his Rivers and Mountains (1966).

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