Falco peregrinus

On a silver grey day, in a strange
light reflected from summer raindrops,
with the paths all puddles, and my
rose blooms ruined, petals plastered together,
I am sitting well out of the breeze
and just out of the rain,
listening to a murder of argumentative crows.
It feels as though summer is in retreat
under a sky well-clothed,
thoroughly muffled up in nimbus.
The swifts have not yet headed south,
though they’ll not be long, I fancy.
They are low fliers today:
I watch them skim the roofs and treetops;
a lone starling perches on a chimney pot,
fluffs out his feathers sadly.
Behind me our elm tree is dying, like
autumn come too soon with the rain:
after thirty years and thirty feet of growth
the beetle and the fungus have beaten it,
and I am in mourning for its shrivelled leaves.
Well, there’s nothing to do out here,
time for a coffee, perhaps; time, too, it would seem,
for another argumentative burst
from our local crows. But something else, too -
a shape that speeds across above them,
soars upwards, then with near-closed wings
powers down, levels out, travels on,
a true master of even this sodden air:
a young peregrine tests his wings in the rain,
and takes with him as he flies on
a beat or two of my heart.