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Brian Wake

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All the Same

I only ever fly if there is nothing else to do,
for food or just a little drop to drink,
and even then, the jackdaw thinks,
it must be very high above ferocious competition.

I often soar at least a thousand miles into the sky
away from history or someone talking, even
if but for a moment everyday, about themself.
Liabilities get me down.

I sometimes, swooping through the very darkest
cloud, think that the living cannot breathe
because the dead refuse to die.
But, godforbid, if I, the jackdaw thinks,
were not a bird at all but part
of some vague drift of whiting swimming
in a shoal of anonymity, and open mouthed,
and switching black and silver, this way,
suddenly, and that and plankton barging in
like unsolicited opinion.
And all of us, the jackdaw contemplates,
identical, and so much so
that we might never know
which one of us, of us, is which is which.

 


Brian Wake lives in Merseyside. The ‘Jackdaw’ poems are from his latest collection, Raining Upwards, out this year from Driftwood. Previous titles include Into Hiding and Unbuilding the Ark (Headland).

 

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