Liberté, Égalité, Humanité
The year’s first swallow is here
Just the one
Balanced quite comfortably
On the telephone wire
A bright summery note on a four line stave
Flown in on the warm south wind
It sits, calling for the others
It can’t eat all these midges and mosquitos alone
.
Christopher Perry
15th April, 2020
Of all the birds in all the world
My favourite bird is not at all that big
It’s dull and brown
Slender not round
Without distinctive look
Male and female are indistinct
You’d have thought one would make an effort
But even so they get along
And have a pleasant life
They live by the sea
On Cornwall’s coast
Rock Pipit and his wife
(or is the other way about and does it actually matter?)
.
n.b. GloPoWriMo 2020 Challenge. Warm up. What’s favourite bird? The Rock Pipit, innit!
.
Christopher Perry
1st April, 2020
It was a call like crows
But not those of crows
Even on their most talkative days
When whisked up by winds
When they chitter and churr
It was more musical than crows
Deeper tones balanced by middle notes
From behind the hedgerows
Beyond the browned ancient oaks
Low to the grey horizon
A stretched vee
Approximately formed
Unbalanced, but sharply led
Three, five, seven, nine in clear formation
With forty, fifty, sixty more
Lagging loosely in lines
Heading south
Warning of winter’s coming
Or dragging down
Its icy curtain?
.
CLP 01/12/2019
Hey! Huge heron
With your alarming croak
It sounds to me
You’ve got a frog
In your throat
.
n.b. I was surprised by one of these large creatures taking off from the adjacent field as I stepped into the garden this morning.
.
CLP 27/11/2019
If there is a bird
Designed for all this wet weather
It has to be the heron
Who sits miserably hunched up
With his long coat
Of sad, grey feathers
.
n.b. On an oak bough over a river, just east of Sherbourne, he sat and stared gloomily into the rushing water – catching the mood precisely.
.
CLP 12/10/2019
The busy vole busies herself
Scurries amongst leaf litter
Keeps herself clean
Feeds her young
Whilst far above
Handsomely dressed, preened
Strong, angular, sleek
Magnificent hunter
With oh so to die for eyes
Fire streaked
Focuses on the tidy movements
Identifies and assesses
The challenge
And waits
Hangs on the wind
In familiar territory
Happily being busy
The vole naīve
Despite her globular eyes
Will barely see until too late
That she has been
Targeted, circled, cornered.
Flight, fight or freeze?
Voiceless, useless, helpless
.
CLP 26/11/2018
n.b. Rapere is Latin meaning to take by force, to seize from which the words raptor and rapist derive
