Month: Mar 2023

Jackdaws

They arrive again in this early Spring,
homing in upon the chimney pots,
lilac wing-sheen shining as they turn,
land quite drunkenly, settle on the rims.
They soon begin their foraging;
indisciplined construction showers twigs
upon the drive and block-paved path below,
as off they fly for more from trees nearby
to scratch and scrape and saw. We hear them
on the roof, inside the flue, the urgent
impulse braided in their hearts to nest,
to build these fragile havens for their young,
a threnody as ancient as the stonework
of the house they claim, this Spring, as home.

In boyhood he stalked the Warsash shore
intent on treasure, found preciousness
in cuttlefish bleached like polystyrene,
light as cork. Lifted stones disturbed
with light translucent creatures a low tide left,
awaiting the lung of a flood tide freeing them.

Among the tarred stones and green weed
were barnacled bottles filled with darkness,
archeological cans, driftwood smoothed by
a hundred years afloat and, once, a pirate's chest,
like a piece of left luggage he hid in the marram grass.

And now these images, worn like the driftwood,
haunt his declining nights sleeplessness.
He spends his dreams rearranging the contents,
picking over life's findings like flotsam,
discovering again those things he counts as treasure.