Anyway, a picture of starlings from me, and to accompany it, a poem I jotted down yesterday - my first new attempt at verse for several weeks, in fact:
Pleasantly disturbed at
my desk by the sound of starlings
I turn to see them
sitting singly, all facing the same way,
on the various twiggy black
branches
of the ash trees behind
next door.
As I watch, every so
often one arrives or departs,
flying swiftly across
our ground
as though on some
important mission,
with a schedule to
maintain.
Most of the human
population have no schedule today to worry us.
It is Boxing Day
morning, with the world still more than half asleep.
There are seagulls
drifting slowly across the valley below,
and they have complete possession
of the skyline.
Meanwhile, I see that roses
are still blooming in
our garden,
damaged a little perhaps
by the winter rain
but not by any frost or
snow, so far.
In the kitchen, the
kettle is on for coffee, and
no-one here is going
anywhere very much;
there is a rightness
and a peacefulness about things,
or so I feel. The world today is easy and good,
laid back and
comfortable. Happy Christmas,
God rest you merry.
Still, I find the TV
remote near my hand, and so I use it;
and the news bulletin
smashes through the
illusion of today:
serious winter weather
is waiting just around the corner,
a family has been
killed in a motorway crash,
another made homeless
by floods,
and a hospital is
cordoned off as a virus spreads through the wards.
People are still suffering
and shouting, killing and being killed in our world,
Christmas or no. And suddenly there is an urgent crying of
gulls,
and the ash branches
are empty of starlings
as the black shape of a
hawk
rips across our yards.
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