Winter Weathers
Rain, persistent rain, and the last leaves falling.
Voices twittered feebly. What anxious shadows
blue tits seemed then, fluttering through the bare trees’
foodbanks of branches.
How I wished a luminous green bee-eater,
lilac-breasted roller or scarlet macaw could
burst upon us, glittering tropic feathers
calling the sun out.
Wrong, so wrong: dim light, and the silhouetted
birds among black twigs with their agile turnings,
pecking stabs and faint as if distant fluting,
had their own beauty.
Now the clouds have gone. As a blue transparence
bathes the green-streaked bark, and a blue tit’s beret
flashes living sapphire, our street’s wet houses
glow and are holy.
Edmund Prestwich lives in Manchester. He has published two collections, Through the Window and Their Mountain Mother. You can link to his website and blog at http://edmundprestwich.co.uk/ and for his Amazon page click here.