Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

JAY

He has a reddish body. Half his wings are bright
blue & the rest black. He has a quick eye
& sharply curved beak.
               Critics say he’s a thieving sneak
               a scavenger.

Preciously guarding his pheasants’ eggs
milord’s keeper nailed him
               raggedly fluttering in the wind
                                 to a treestump billboard.

THIS ENDED HIS 2ND YEAR.
                         For the 1st he flew wherever he wished.

He lived close to my house
               (exchanged by a small boy for 6d)
                                   warmly in a thick firtree.

HE WAS AS VAIN AS A COOT.

Once he fell
               preening & swaggering
               cockily admiring himself
                     into a greenscum waterbutt.

Sometimes running - hide & seek - among trees & shrubs
                 (with him swooping & searching)
I softly whistled. Loudly squawking he immediately found me.

YESTERDAY I WALKED IN THE PHEASANT WOOD.

Still blue/black & fluttering in the wind
               - spreadeagled & bedraggled
                  with dim eyes -
he silently flung me I think a kind of greeting.

Note. Birds are well regulated. (The environment regulates them.) They die off anonymously here & there by the thousands. But this particular one I knew & loved. Frequently cursing his ignorant enemy I gladly remember him

REDBREAST

In my old age I find this pugnacious
lovely-red gamecock smartly attractive.
                 When dig my garden he darts
                 perkily roundeyed to my boot’s edge
                 hopping & bobbing…
This morning in fact he popped through the window
& perched close to my head.

                                             Stealthily I spread
some cakecrumbs at the far end of the ledge.
            Looking & pecking
            nodding & nodding
            he thoughtfully acknowledged me.

*  *  *

Stupidly when young I searched the hedgerows
               (satchel on back & rifle in hand)
for the smartest birds I could find.

*  *  *

SUDDENLY I FOUND HIM!

                       He was perched on a twig
                       singing & throbbing…

Very soon he lay splayed in a ditch
                 - a xmas-red balloon
                 - emptily staring…

Note. We all know that our friend can fight like a bull territory proud…He’s a beautiful but ignorant bird - evidently often unable to distinguish a friend from an enemy. On this occasion (dimly in the past, thank goodness!) he failed, poor devil, utterly!