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Encounter With A Blackbird
While pruning the orange trees,
Snipping the white wood
Out of the lime-green leaves,
I saw, high up, a cluster of twigs
Ready for my cut and stepped up
The ladder, my secateurs raised.
There - a blackbird, sleek head,
Yellow beak pointing to the right,
Gimlet eye staring hard.
Neither of us moved.
I began to wonder
What the etiquette was
For disturbing a lady blackbird
On her nest.
I opted for stepping down
And creeping away.
That night I dreamt
She was sitting on silver foil
And not with eggs
But potatos, they felt warm and
Slippery as I turned them for her.
Then the potatos
Got fastened to plyboard
And pinned to a classroom wall,
Then they were put in a roasting pan
And stuck in an oven.
Can you eat your own dreams?
Cool dawn slipped in
Carrying
orange blossom breeze
And a limpid arpeggio of notes.
She had got into my dreams,
Had I into hers?
I listened to each whistled quaver
And semi-quaver tumbling proudly
From the top of the orange tree
Like I have never listened before.
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