Hugo Williams
The Rain Bird
Out on the lawn each morning
The great green, red-capped
Woodpecker holds
Audience like a priest,
A prophet, makes
A poor weathercock you’d say:
Breeze blowing westward,
Bows stiffly east.
And anyway it shouldn’t appear
Unless it’s going to rain,
Keeps its clockwork in the trees
On all sunny days.
Then down bangs a tropic summer
Like this, seeds explosive,
Gourds enormous, not a marestail
In view and does he change his ways?
Not a bit. But later
I thought that perhaps
I had been a bit slow,
Got it cocked or incomplete,
After all, the bird on the lawn,
Myself in the house, we should know
By now if our place
Is in the ring or on the beat.
Page(s) 26
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