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.