FIRST SNOW AND THE OWL

This poem I wrote while I was at Leicester University studying for a BA in English Literature.

One of my lecturers was poet Robert Wells who was on the editorial board of the English Faculty's 'Poetry Worksheet'. The Spring 1982 edition carried this poem of mine which Robert Wells had seen and recommended for publication. 

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FIRST SNOW AND THE OWL

Sun's haemorrhage

On snow's anaemia momentarily

Lights up the owl's alarm.

Pink freezes blue in the forgetfulness

Of moments while the owl

Calculates winter's coming.

Above, numb limbs of tree

Girdle him in stupor,

Sore, separate suddenly from his hooting.

Conspicuous as blood on snow

He breathes steadily beneath measured

Feathers.

He will not hoot again,

Or call to the vast, heedless settling

Delicacy. The nest is cold.

This he knows, eyeing the white shock

Of the hibernal onset, mistrustful,

Weighing a branch beneath his weight.

Below him, slow, the roots leak paths

In the void, rising, stern, determined

Like the grip of bruised fingers.

The owl flies low, buoyed up by fear

And the air's crisp parsimony,

To warn the sun.

Nuthatch

Feeling very privileged to have been watching two young great spotted woodpeckers, a family of long tailed tits and a nuthatch who usually lives in the local woods, all coming to my garden feeders today. The unexpected nuthatch visit inspired me tonight as I sit waiting for twilight to fall, when the family of hedgehogs who are now dropping by my garden each evening arrive with their noisy but captivating shenanigans...


You scramble, head down,
Holding the world mirrored
Invert under scuttling feet


Clambering, chestnut breast to bark
Smoke blue wings a caped swoop,
Aerobat, probing and melting
On a tittering tightrope


Patient bill, plastering a pinhole persistent
To fend marauder starlings away from your babies.


D-I-Y dodger, framing the woodpecker brother's old pad
For your rental, yet wholly inhabiting
Your acorn carpeted aerodrome.


Scurrying sideways, dissolving
Through the beech canopy
Skimming your liquid voice's pebble
To skip over the rippling pool of dusk


High over hedgehogs chuckling
Through beech mast and littered leaves
On their way to a festival of surreptitious snorting
Under the bone-blanched moon
And the shrill verdict of owls