Song Thrush

I can hear him, though I do not see him:

the song thrush is invisible, even on his high perch,

now the trees are so well clothed,

but his repeated notes stir the air and make it tremble

on this still and drowsy June afternoon, not far

from where I am kneeling, fork in hand, ready

to attack the weeds.  And his sweet and plaintive music

touches a long-forgotten chord in me, so the memories remain half-hidden

of some other garden, and some other day.

But what I do recall is how I delighted

in the shards of snail shell I discovered

on the pebble path around my childhood patch of ground.

We children each had our own little garden -

I planted feverfew and raspberries in mine, and some peas

(which hardly grew, as I recall), and a houseleek

culled from the flat roof of Granny’s outhouse;

it was a delight and wonder, this growing of things,

but far more, that a song thrush should choose these stones I planted

as an anvil on which to break his snails.

The particular and special stone he used, a little larger than the others,

I brought back from Llanfairfechan, I think.  How good

that he thought it special too.

We always had song thrushes in those days; today,

like the starlings and sparrows that used to compete for our scraps,

the speckled thrushes have mostly disappeared,

or so it seems.

So I am glad to hear this one still singing,

and that he should sing my childhood’s song.