Thinking about the phrase ‘Of Note’ while lying in the hammock, I was surrounded by birds making their presence felt, and remembered that birdsong can be more of a warning than a celebration.
Apparently the dawn chorus can record a brutal contest for territory much as the fighting described daily on the radio; this garden is in the middle of a Europe involved in another territorial war, a nightmare. A nightmare that’s being repeated globally.
Meanwhile this bird has knocked itself unconscious on the glass window and was slowly recovering, so by listening to some shrill bird song while looking at one shocked but recovering bird this poem emerged.
Of course this bird has vanished from the final poem.
Of Note
A pause in the whine of combine mower chainsaw
a silence
then the same bird cry, a note so insistent
it’s a whistle from a neighbour a summons
not the butcher bird with its pouch of fledgling prey
not shrill enough for the shrike
whatever it is it’s something
that will soak the trees
then be quiet again sedate
and deadened
the restless flocks of starlings are ready
a shudder of wings
and there in the background
a circle saw
sense it this uncertain hour
the urge to close down
*
It’s a summons
from behind Novak’s empty house
or now, beyond Mrs Lorrydriver’s shed
an insistent whistle shifting away
nothing can lure it back
the cry fades they listen
they do nothing
yesterday they said isn’t it strange
to feel quickly detached from homes they’ve only just left
yet now, this call
they thought they had cut ourselves off
no twinge of guilt at their escape
ruthlessly snipping the strings then this bird.
*
Night is life, in technicolour, anxious and spluttering
without boundaries
caves of forgetting
under a goose-feather duvet
a cave is day day might have walls and no doors but a cave is day
a timetable for survival
for avoiding terror
while in night’s over-abundance of colour
all is activity and pleading
a world that’s neon-pink and glittering green
– though waiting in a train carriage, the thud of a bullet
is also night –
day is dark and located
it’s in that abandoned shuttered house
enticing
erupting from the body with an urgency that’s awe
as in part fear testing the edge the explosion
but concealed
turn of the lane nightdark
the day is dark the night the past
day returns to that house in the forest
no windows no doors
night blurred in a disco of jangled music
that house more than temptation
day the urgency to be there
*
On the distant bank are low buildings, the mill at Zvikovec,
dense red brick
inside those windowless walls: birches, larch,
outside is the roar of the weir.
Following the river, squelching through mud to swim, they ask
– do we want to be where we are?
Last night dreaming in a managed landscape
all the bits with power are
all the parts of our night-world are without power.
Inside those brick walls among the trees are landings, stairs, corridors.
These are the woods they walk in
or lying by the river
watching in the distance a heron paying attention. Quite still
silent there in the centre of the meadow
the heron staring beyond the weir. A long still wait.
*
The neighbour invited them for coffee. He didn’t know,
nor did they
his next July will become June, April slide into March,
young leaves crinkle to tight buds.
It was the back-to-frontness,
the cuckoo too early and sharp among the missing walnuts.
The blackbirds rootling
insisting on their rat-a-tat chorus until the very last light.
His gift to them of apricots, their drunken sway of lilac,
they didn’t know by sunset it will wither.
Not his nor theirs. This garden, orchard, forest. On loan
the empty hives, the hard-packed earth
the birdsong, the sharp note of the thrush.
That same bird cry, a note so insistent it’s a whistle
a summons
a shadow behind the fence.
The hoarse protest from his rooster, the honeysuckle
reaching towards him,
the tuk-tuk of redstarts, the silence.
Blue Door Press 