Saturday, 28 January 2023

Sparrows

Just doing the Big Garden Birdwatch,which in my small garden involves many sparrows, certainly more of them than any other species here.

I wrote this poem in the last couple of weeks after reading Edna St Vincent Millay's 'Wild Swans'.

For the sparrows...

Sparrows 

(after Edna St Vincent Millay)

As the sparrows chattered

their quarrel in the hedge

their frenzy seemed to shout over me

and draw me into their gangland morning.

 

How loud! I could not hear what my heart

would say, and forgot my heart’s beating,

its own waking and sleeping ...

 

So I left it for a moment

and lived in the heart of a host

of small brown birds.