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Simon Curtis

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Weymouth nightingale

As ring-road cars thwacked past the parking spot
Where kissing-gate gives onto reed-beds path,
I picked out, just, his rising, falling song
In air still damp from cloudburst aftermath.

The girl had told me that I’d hear him there,
The nightingale, my May Day singleton,
Secure in fading light and roadside gorse,
His journey out of Africa now done.

Those haunting, half-heard notes were something, too,
That if you could, you would have loved to share,
Asleep now in the Home, ten miles away,
Your brain confounded by dementia;

A song which must, instead, suffice as news
To talk of when I come tomorrow night,
For all I’m doubtful if you’ll take it in ....
To think of journey’s end, though;  fading light

And nightingales that once you told me of,
In Towcester churchyard, forty years ago -
So much floods back to mind, of worth, of loss,
Of time that’s gone, and debt of thanks I owe.


 

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