Beyond the garden,
a bluetit tweets terrible news.
The baby she'd nudged over the edge had nosedived.
Mind you, she could have hauled him back
if it hadn't been for the child kidnapping him.
Though her fingers no longer than an ash leaf
she daren't peck him from her palm
instead had to watch her bring him inside.
And now, he lays on a cotton wool bed
inside a shoe box, front of fire.
Bluetit perceives stacks of books, stuff, rugs.
They must feel soft on landing,
mellower than any meadow she would have shown him.
It is worrying,
Tonight, I will hammer on the window
peck until she'll let him fly away with me.
Little bluetit inside is in love.
Distant the feel of the twig bed
the mouldy mulberries.
Dismantled now all that was inherent
the worms, the feathers too,
faint the recognition of a inclining food-bearing beak.
It's not the pane keeping them asunder.
No one had told him about the glimmer inside his wingpit.
But inside days, maybe weeks, it flares
sweat now trickling into his eyes,
limp wings flapping, flittering, fledgling.
It couldn't be helped.
Outside, mum has taken to the bed.
A fresh batch to hatch
if only she could, just this once, hold onto them.
Blue skies, grey skies, clouds or no clouds
if only the pane didn't feign crisp air.
Time and again he crashed.
Hope wasn't a thing with feathers.
She'd have to drill, injure, smash
the gap in the triple glaze never wide enough.
Sadness, motionlessness or shit on the breakfast table
may warrant eviction, he mused.
Times, places, compasses
work, pints, bed, stop.
Still breaths to expunge, air to take to.
And then one fine day, a tweet so shrill it deadens
over and above the black smoke streaming from the kitchen.
Open the windows, they do, the men who make puddles mid kitchen floor.
But I can't see through the blackness
or turn toward the fresh air.It's no use.
I was wise to knit the nest at the top of the tree.
As she watches the flames eat the guts of the house
she pushes down her glee and her silly heart’s hope.
Fire fighters drag people out, one by three. No sign of
the girl. Her mother has to be constrained.
Keeled over, little bluetit awaits death contemplating how his glimmer had culminated in cutting everything and everyone wide open. About to draw his last gasp
Bluey can’t feel the soft touch, doesn’t know he’s been released and will, not long from now
join mum in hatching the current batch
skaling lofty heights and tweeting great things intermittently.
Fire
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