Moving Back In

It's noticeable there's a bit more wildlife about. Or a a bit less cautious. Maybe it's just here on the edge of suburbia. I wrote this for a wellbeing project/competition at work:

 

 Moving Back In

 

The annual blue tits have returned

And the goldfinch

To flit and chatter

And peck out fresh buds,

Unperturbed by mankind’s crisis.

 

Then one day a pheasant, a pheasant

Took a walk across our suburban patch

And then more game, a red legged partridge,

Said Google,

Ventured, from his estate to ours.

 

They say noise pollution is down

And the wildlife is moving back in

Though this high street is noisy with buses and boy-racers,

with footfall at the chemist opposite.

 

Our robin is quietened –

A pair of magpies scouting out a location, location,

And a pair of cloaked ravens flap fingered wings

Their flight path ignoring the parallel lines

That mark our domains

 

Foxes who tore open rubbish on Sunday nights

Now openly pad across lawns, leaping fences,

No news of poisoned bats to disturb their play.

 

No facemasks, no lockdown, no travel bans

Nature runs free while we stand still,

watching

The Moment of Recognition

A new poem about recognition. It came from several sources, the memory of a conversation long ago when I inarticulately described how music worked for me, crossed paths with a writing exercise about what makes life worth living, and there it was, popped out more or less fully formed in 5 minutes .  .  .  if only it was always that easy.

 

 

The moment of recognition

 

The first few notes and you know where they lead

a description that someone else wrote that chimes inside,

a moment of emotion in song that holds you,

a sense of unsaid understanding found in a poem

a movement in a piece of music that aligns somewhere and carries you along

the untangling of thoughts into patterns and shapes,

untangled unconsciously by these forms of art

the truth of science

the mystery of faith

the comfort of love

 

when the work of someone who’s never known you,

lets you feel like they do,

and you want them to talk some more, about you

 

a face in the crowd, who sees you too.

 

 

 

Up There

 

 

Up there

On the stair

Is where, I sat

Listening in

Barefoot and pyjama-d

In the comforting sound of adult conversation

Six or eight voices, out of range

All the edges knocked off and muffled

 

Listening in also

For the tread, closer

And the pull of the door on the carpet

Someone coming to check the oven

A swift and quiet retreat

as the chatter bounced out into the hallway

and up the stairs after me

 

voices clear, recognisable,

overlapping each other

until the door pushes to again

the dinner checked and stirred

and I creep back down

as far as I dare,

no-man’s land beneath me

get caught there, sent back to bed

tummy-ache or can’t sleep fooling no-one

and everyone will know

 

Up there

On the stair

The bridge between sleep and grown-ups

Just sit and stay as long as you can

Until they troop out for their dinner

Younger then than I am now

 

Older and I’m there

On the stair

Creeping back in

Don’t dare wake

Who might clock the time

Miss the step that creaks

Tread the edge

Of the one that groans in the middle

Even now I know the routine

Plane tickets printed but still in the tray

Remembered at midnight for early flights

Still got the moves,

in and out

I have my own stairs now

It’s not quite so much fun

Up there