I wrote this after braving a very chilly Boxing Day at Marsh Farm (not a bird in sight that day!) on the Wirral:
The Cold (or Brown Winter)
The Mersey tracts
And the dulling banks
Brownly heave with the
Sleeping beat of
Slough-stuck animals:
Twisted in their holes.
They’ll wake up bone; frozen
Smeared in three months’ tallow
Like slick children
From earthen wombs.
Winter stings through the
Reed and bramble beds;
Goes stinking through the
Gristling limbs of sad
Dead fledglings:
Birds born pre-mature,
In spit-made suburbs;
Pitched from the nest –
The ice-ground snagged
The blackbird’s young.
The shrew shrinks from it,
The birds shun it and
Leave for Italy-heat,
To become a family meal:
Better than morass and chill.
And in the brown river-mist
And the gaping bridge-held holes
- the transit:
The old pass on and
The children turn on
And the cold destroys it all.
That's a very sad poem Jenn.
Cheers, Linda.
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I suppose I always find winter quite a sad time for wildlife, so I must have captured that - but I didn't set out to write anything sad. Oh dear!
Made me feel the winters damp chill alright - such a hard time for birds and for folks! Thanks for posting, Jenn.
I could feel the cold in your poem & the rage at migrating birds being caught & killed. It is a very thought provoking poem.
Best wishes
Val.