The poems of Nick Hallam

Here are some poems sent to us here in Wildlife enquiries, they are the wonderful work of Nick Hallam

Storm

Thunder’s Bofors –
That shrapnel swallows swarf and shriek,
Fall, scolding
Scalding the very air;

Fall
Would be caltrops underfoot
But, at the last, spike skyward again,
Rain hissing aerofoils: fins, wings –
As if little Lightnings, nothing spare,
All business –
Ramjet beaks agape
Cram midge, may-, maybe damselfly,
Cry, seeming of boundless satiety.

15th Aug 2010              

Owl

Tawny owl upon a pole
Winds a ratchet neck, no click;
Welds me with a torching stare,
Grips the perch as pincers crack
What skull, what wreck of mouse or mole;
What drop-forge stamps the lives that kick,
What screeching crucible is there,
What fire-storm, after which – what lull?

31 March 1993

Wansford

Cows watering –
At once, disturbed
Picked up their limbs towards some height;
As if Victorian ladies bathed,
percieved some impropriety and
Fearful of unseemliness,
Decided upon withdrawal then –

That swallows swheeled about their skirts
Mud mortaring,
Packed black, their beaks,
Eager of summer’s latest brood –
Sweft lily-pads, pink profligates,
Swift-swafting, importuning then,
Wide wantons, wooers of the sun

Outside Lane

Sixty on a seventy max’
Who could complain?

Yet a radiator fills my mirror,
Headlights fisting morse to kill –
The rest meanwhile make ninety plus,
Non-stop stop-lights, on, off, on, on
Not one concedes one second’s loss,
Enraptored faces –
My face, nearside, some Sunday driver’s,
Some waster's blocking up their road

Who sees however
Long and slow, this other traveller,
In wholly other outside lane;
I wonder if she sees them go, this lady driver?
This heron, who
Fills windscreen, roof-light, offside wing’-
Wings hedgerow, reedbed-bordered pool,
Salves, eases this morning's hard shoulder.

2 Nov 2006

Above Ancaster

Oh! The skylarks –

Copses crowd like cottage loaves,
Woodpigeons count them, fives by fives,
Cow-parsely scents their leavening;

There, rising, proving, wheat in waves –
Nine-thirty-two from Grantham leaves,
Making for summer’s evening;

Oh! The skylarks.

5 Feb 1995

Red Kite

To sudden flame,
To afterburn,
Bush, brash and briar, to pulling ‘g’
Heels, peels belief in orange fire
From eyes unbidden, unblinkingly;

Fells frond, through falling leaf, the by
Beyond and on again, beyond –
A fork-tailed, single seat fast jet
Heads thunder under radar, yet
To hedge-hopping far valley floor,
Flings spinney, flicks out –
Follows perhaps, at fancy’s spur,
Some luckless ammunition train;

Carrion –
Calls “Target acquired”
Sets gatling gaze and
Out from sun
To strafing imagination.

26 Apr 2010

Mirror

Lying back from concentrated work
And, looking perpendicularly up
Through skylight, see
Lying back in concentrated work
And looking perpendicularly down,
Apparently through skylight, straight at me,
Milvus Milvus
Where, as cirrus cloud ensilvers sky,
Red kite ensilvers since my inward eye.

21 Apr 2010