A chorus dawns the most essential feature to see a miscreant,
abandoned as a baby swinging from a Union Jack?
or a Cenotaph the horns of empty contusions,
a now lawful ‘you’
hurt inside the jerking melting benches
&later on the bonnet of a Jaguar car green emerald
forming part of the Royal Convoy
HM Berridge of The Vale of Catmose
remedial policies, my voice now, yes
a flightless young magpie tumbles to the ground,
in Oakham veils of rain shining purple acetate.
The bird has now stopped moving.
Crouches down in the gutter, & make no noise
shivering from dehydration &perhaps fear too,
airborne to jettison the runt. Multum in parvo liths, carva
sprigs from veins of leadened hope
drowned in magnetic scrunches &perhaps fear too, again
if nature is allowed to run its course,
it’ll probably be dead before the day is out.
Or hirelings would be wriggling: saluting their children
a / sorry three decades distant in time,
a young jackdaw and life
tumbles from its nest in the steeple of a village church.
Steely-grey feathers, yellow beak,
an injured wing dragging along the floor which pours
Jackdaws & Magpies share family ties.
The crow family. Carrion kin. Stitched.
Someone, stumbled across this injured young bird,
boxed it up, and took it to the home of a local woman,
an amateur animal healer.
From there, the jackdaw found its way
into the hands of the man
who would go on to become my father, now dead.
O dusted guffaw
a sprawling pinny, with a body
unmanageable I lay my head against the weir,
the bottomless landscape my silent boring faith
by my magpie’s side,
I have a much greater understanding now
of the origins of my pain
its aching sills by the singing sires sometimes
I wonder deeply of the talk about them murdering songbirds
collapsing ecosystems, jib
the alleged crimes of tearing out of eyes,
and anuses of lambs
that they even bear a spot of the devil’s blood
under their tongues & refused to mourn for Christ,
all loaded with ancient scorn,
Old Mag, its rough chatter not matter!! guffaw
Not my Mag! Bougainvillaea the littering birthmark,,
my mag would never, most delicately
sorried the coffers to a summers bloom
while the Pioneer Corps presided
& brains ensconced fair-aired
base born whirligig, the sumptuary laws
clump-forming, with whorls of ovate to lance shaped
pointed oh my bare flashing there to turning-blossom pink!
Everyone knows the rhyme,
or a version of it: one magpie brings sorrow;
two mirth; three a wedding;
four a birth; five silver, six gold; and seven the devil,
his own self alone!
