Hard Winter
A thrush clicked
in a frozen thicket
its beak, metallic,
flicked on a stone
again and again
till a mollusc cracked
and was gulped, so quick
you could mistake it
for a cold quiver
of the earth.
*Brian Cole says: “I had no contact with poets until one crashed into the back of my car in the Wicklow Mountains. He apologised – ‘I’m a poet you see’. Somehow it was stimulating.”
