The Friday Poem

Sacrifice

Opening the cardboard box that had held
a long winter coat for my mother out of the catalogue,
the ash-frail rows, arranged in sawdust,
from bough-cleft, twig-fork, thorn-bush, tussock,
were flooded with sterile day in their angular nest.
But to me they were beautiful,
my thick-freckled face pored over
each peppered, blotched, speckled or smudged or swirled
stopped beginning of a small bird’s world,
in pastel blue and green, or white so pure
it seemed just solider light,
each airy husk a token of sorts
in the egg kirkyard of a schoolboy.
In those days, robbery was my form of love.

Redpoll, goldcrest, song thrush, wren,
willow tit, linnet, skylark, dunnock—

only my gaze then incubated them,
and all that hatched was possession’s joy.