Featured Poem

Sleek in the gauzy mist
keen focus jerking her head, crow
pokes the weave of a half-woken shrub
selects a long twig and takes off.
Soon stops to correct a lopsided droop
rests it down on a chimney stack
to peck it up again in a sweeter grip,
nods a quick glance then drops
into a low swoop, out of sight
for a wingbeat between tree and brick.

Sky’s grey is full and delicate as fur
on collapsing fruit. Rainbow is fat
hunkered close above the horizon’s blur
and muffled-soft as crow is sharp
and distinct against the quilted matt
of damp trees guzzling. Crow adjusts
her gearing for the wider drag
of her over-long moustache.

Chosen twig was in the clutch
last year of the shrub’s new shoots
offered tenderly with leaf and bud,
nurtured and matured by lengthening dark
to preserve a winter’s wisdom in its curve
now proffered as both purpose
and aid to flight, in the steel lock
of her beak’s bite. She presses on

through the clammy drizzle, glossed
by her own resilience, beyond
the copse where rainbow plants a foot,
insisting iridescence on its mossy coat –
for a moment petrolling her wing,
shimmer-marbling her head and throat,
her belly swelling preciously, the steer
of her feathered tail, and the twig
held as a tightrope walker might
climbing treetop-high, risking life
in the grip of spring-loaded hope.