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

An eagle came to my bird-table.
The bluetits froze,
I heard the cat-flap slam
and there it was
all six foot wing-span
and head like Genghis Khan.

“What do you want?’ I mouthed
from behind the drapes and double glazing.
It fixed me with a stony eye:
‘You...” it replied.

The sweet blood parried in my veins.
This is the stuff of dreams, I thought,
and pinched myself and looked again,
but there it stood, the king of birds
and I the least of men.
                                  “‘What for...?”
I mouthed again. It turned
and smoothed its feathers in the sun:
“I think you know...” it yawned.

I stepped onto the patio then,
walked slowly up the crazy-paving
past the little home-made pond
where cloudlets skimmed across blue water
and frogs broke wind.
                                 0 what hauteur
within those black and amber eyes
that watched me as I slowly neared
the leaning platform where he stood
with bacon rinds and crusts of bread,
and 0 what breath: like rabbit blood,
burnt gorse, melt-water and a hint of whisky.

“You know me now,” it stated, and I said “I do...”
“Then tell me who I am...” it said, and as it did
it turned away its golden eye
and, faint as new moons in a summer sky,
therein I saw uncertainty.
“You are,” I said, “an eagle, Golden,
Aquila Chysaetos, lord of glen,
of peak and mountain pass and highland tarn,
blown off course or lost your compass
and now at roost in my back garden...”

and as I spoke I looked around
at rusting swing, a trug left out,
a bit of wall that needed pointing,
and wondered at the smallness of it all,
its pinched, suburban air, and then
I looked him in the eye again
and “Sir...” I added suddenly,
“if that is you, then what is me...?" 

“Man, you are,” the eagle said,
“Homo, Sapien and Erectus, lord
of ledger book and overdraft,
of gearstick, fly-zip and the garden fork,
prince of the putty knife, flymo, fridge,
liege of the jump-lead and fluorescent lighting,
the toast-rack, knapsack, pac-a-mac and car-port,
master of the stair-rods, Sir,
                                          in short,
all that I should wish to be
were not I, as I am, this avian you see...”
and on the word he rose into the sky
and headed slowly north across the motorway.

Flat-faced I stood amazed and flightless.
I heard the cat-flap slam,
the bluetits thawed and chirped again,
and slowly down the path I walked
as one who dreams,
                               as one who
has a bit of sanding he should do...