Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
The Meaning of Birds
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
Summary
Three ravens, or in their absence,
crows, any black bird, signal a death.
These three on the wall, in the snow,
in the lane – a teenager or widow
they have enfolded as their own.
Rooks know loneliness and grief,
know it in their purple gowns,
their raised skin crowns. What of
the one I watched die? Its fellows paced,
crawed, nursemaids or executioners
I couldn't tell. Before we came here
I flew over these woods and fields
like a pigeon homing, dreamt also
of houses back to back in rows,
rain-black streets and cobbled roads,
of trees an ingrained seam.
Hillside a water-fall, sky a wedge
of black distance. On the hill a church
with two black eyes guarding
its underground and earthly charges.
An eagle means war – rare here
in the West Riding of Yorkshire –
unless you count the Civil War dead
seen marching down Market Street,
that corner of the woodswe'll not now go.
What of the peregrine on our fence
that autumn, its chick in the fir tree
at the bottom of the garden?
What of the collared dove the dog
pulled from a rabbit hole to flap,
flightless with shock across the field,
what of the kestrel? There, there it is –
wind-skirted redback, windrider,
fieldcopter dizzying off the line.
The magpie is a question. Each morning
a question that never gets answered.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 16 - 17Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018