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last week, we had a strange, out of season bout of snow that sent all the spring birds mad. a confused Jackdaw found shelter under our chimney cap and unbeknownst to us, ended up falling down into the stove below, for all I heard was a strange noise that I couldn’t identify so forgot about.
1
2
i
what is this?
this fertile holy scene
who is the architect?
who broke the neck of branches
just for more to grow
3
throughout my childhood, my mother often voiced her fears of rooks building a rookery in our village due to the constant foreboding caw they make, and how difficult it would be to live with that. an anecdote that I always found amusing, imagining rooks packing their suitcases and moving into the copper beeches a few houses down.
ii
there are fractures and coppices woven here
bridges and byways where things pass
where a child can creep inside a secret tunnel
that lies within a thicket of the land
curtains hang, solid
fossilised
of soil and sediment
they say, that once upon a time, somewhere in eastern europe lived a man with a nasty problem. he talked too much about other people. he could not help himself, for whenever he heard a story about somebody he knew and sometimes even about someone he did not know, he just had to tell his friends. the more he relished in the attention, the more he embellished the tales. (other than that, he was really a pleasant man).
but his stories hurt.
so, to teach him a lesson, another man asked if he had any feather pillows. the man scoffed and said ‘i am not poor’ and brought him one. the second man handed him a pair of scissors. ‘cut it open’. reluctantly the man obeyed. sending a cloud of feathers out into a vast churning mass in the wind. the second man waited for the feathers to disperse and settle. then asked him to collect every single feather to put back into the pillow. the man stared in shock. ‘that is impossible, you know I can’t do that'.
For which the second man nodded in a rather irritating way and said ‘that is what happens once a rumour leaves your mouth. flying on the wings of the wind, hurting as they go’.
4
iii
someone ruined the blackbird's nest
stole the eggs
who would do such a thing?
you watched
as she stepped into the hedgerow
dividing the copse
the corpse
her voice choked
who would do such a thing?
not an egg left
you looked at the thicket
that now veiled
the broken home
who would do such a thing?
5
a fly on the wall
pressed to the glass
can you hear that?
rumours of skin
of life or death?
just over there
beneath the epidermis veneer
in the quiet damp?
retracted with time
you can see the gaunt decay
of empty skin untouched
forgotten, unseen
nocturnal
brings an intense silence
stunned, in the headlights
rest your legs
remain unseen
just over there
deep in the womb
this pliable mortal contour
with an inky fluorescence
life continues despite knowing of death
our own pale ritual
disintegrating into a muted void
6
1 Corvus monedula - Jackdaw - Corvidae
2 Columba palumbus - Woodpigeon - Columbidae
3 Corvus frugilegus - Rook - Corvidae
4 a Jewish parable borrowed by Shoshannah Brombacher
5 Turdus merula - Blackbird - Turdidae
6 Pica pica - Magpie - Corvidae
All bird recordings borrowed from the British Library Sounds Archive, Early wildlife recordings, all recorded before 1940.