Mick Delap
Heron
Greenwich Station. And
wearily off the evening train,
my eye is lifted to the hunch and push,
hunch and push, of a heron overhead
shouldering aside the failing light
with laboured strokes that puddle
Dockland’s gaudy, settling sky.
“Gooleyflap”, my doting father
once hailed one with a sudden flourish.
Far from England, and the ramshackle present,
back beside a childhood ditch in Donegal,
his flighty old man’s mind
stilled itself, to strike,
transfix with a boy’s wonder
the slippery, silver word:
“gooleyflap”.
And still, here in London,
this enduring heron draws tight
the burden of the day, lets go,
draws tight, lets go.
wearily off the evening train,
my eye is lifted to the hunch and push,
hunch and push, of a heron overhead
shouldering aside the failing light
with laboured strokes that puddle
Dockland’s gaudy, settling sky.
“Gooleyflap”, my doting father
once hailed one with a sudden flourish.
Far from England, and the ramshackle present,
back beside a childhood ditch in Donegal,
his flighty old man’s mind
stilled itself, to strike,
transfix with a boy’s wonder
the slippery, silver word:
“gooleyflap”.
And still, here in London,
this enduring heron draws tight
the burden of the day, lets go,
draws tight, lets go.
 |
Page(s) 23
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