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

Dotterel feeding in hayfields 1950/1997

fells
fire-dawn                                                              incense
fine-drawn are                  with a touch of humour
that same innocence                 according to their own laws
fulfil themselves

highest fells                                             are as the Great Makars
trees with heads in the air                               buds of their own making
rake over fell tops               stooking them nearer or further
breeding birds                    and so             music from wadingbirds

who seem with joy over-ready to glide down to their feet
and eat                                                         whats left
what the haymakers                      making                      have raked

dotterel pass the shyer, even shyer, Golden-plover
who don’t come down to the feast, on their way down past
making least fuss - whereas Curlews and Peewits* claim, and
                                                                                            declaim
putting my spyglass off its aim
meek, the rare dotterel, very thinly scattered, there in families
not lost in what remains of the tussocks but badging, enamelling,
mirage between bales and swathes superimposed on cops and swales
hard on the eyes, hard on the swards own harsh
wind music is light, they work off one another
over hayfields, lakes of sheen, days’ lightening shorn green
the napp running first one way and then the other
so the distance buckles as with the pipe and bugle of their
                                                                                      singing
and the mirage catches us off-guard
shorn as sheep keeps tune      the whole dale ringing