Tuesday 31 May 2011

Petty Ornithology

This park a tabula rasa where in any season
I have approached you you always see
in a man taking bread to a Canada goose
this particular type of on-edge trepid-

ation, the quick drawing back of a hand
into a knot that has anticipated lunge
or at least fierce sneezing. The trigger
movements of fish catching themselves

looking at themselves in the green
sunlight. My coot’s-nest a volcanic island
lair made, maybe, of torn-up blue magazines,
an eyeful of ice-lolly sticks on which

the jokes have been worn funnyless by sheet
erosion. Your wing retains the head
you have snapped back and away from me.
An unnatural duck; egg-shaped body.

Beak under feathers. Rival prams
stir up pigeons. Your reclusive eye
sets. Children dam a stream, a path –
scatter of unhealthy sticks. Primaries

and other feathers. Mud; stalks. In time
an egg becomes a person, instantaneously.

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