Birder
or S.M. & M.C.
It’s so nice to be with people who know,
whose knowledge comes easy as water
and is as clear, who look at white-blue sky
and catch the high speck that is skylark –
know it, say it and with their quiet words
watch it fall to ground, as they expect.
It’s light knowledge, or heavy knowledge
lightly carried – (I leave out the boasters,
of course, those proud strutters, stringers,
so often filled up with self, self, self).
I’m grateful for the constant drip-feed,
the trickled information, handed to me
as one bird hands grubs into its child’s bill.
And I fill so slowly, hearing each ting-ching
as facts find their fit places inside me,
and I know, as well as I know anything,
that the process – the sharing, the hearing,
the touching another person – is the joy.
Two things follow: the thought, maybe,
that I’ll be a sharer, passing songs along,
passing the sight of that falling sigh of lark
to friends further down the road; and
the wish to empty out at night, to forget,
to let me learn it all again tomorrow.
Page(s) 10
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The