appearing always like an afterthought,
this blood-breasted, cocked head semicolon
skips before me as I light a cigarette.
Adjusting my sweat-rimmed bunnet
and sighing the fumes in two columns
to the rolling slate-grey sky;
the Ruddock arrives to help weather
the storm.
Is it a practitioner of aeromancy –
this muse of Christmas –
or merely a comforter of the broken?
Will it sing into my soil-stained ear?
Though I am not the son of G*d,
and I have no wounds to use as stain;
I am still a son.
Will it bring water to my chapped lips,
as it seeks to ferry the contents
of my freshly-filled pond to the parched souls
of Purgartory?
I hold my beer up as if to say “I’m fine”.
Will it string the first falling leaves
of autumn into a pastoral-patchwork
shroud; anticipating the end of grief?
I am not a prettye
babe in the wood though.
I am a man in my garden surrounded
by pales of boulders,
spade-scraped markings,
reusable-rubble,
warm-glass bottles, label peeled;
the catalyst for change.
The Ruddock – content with this afterthought –
blood-breasted and cocked head,
it skips away as I crush my cigarette.
Adjusting my sweat-rimmed bunnet
and shivering as the wind strikes up
from the rolling slate-grey sky;
we retreat to our homes
of house or hedgerow
to avoid the storm.
Tomas Bird - Glass Wood 2016
