February 12
– the day the birds first sing, according to the medieval calendar.
For now, they are caught in the dewdrops the spider has hung to dry
on the Hills Hoist overnight; in the rookeries that bouclé the threadbare Elm.
All is mist or spike. The sun is ill-defined, uncertain, seeping through
nicotined sky; sun like sun in water. The vaseline-lens of blossom will blur
the world soon; pastelled pigeons will bubble cool mornings, but not yet.
The elder is not in bud. You made me apologise to it last year, beg forgiveness for
hacking it back. Give it a good explanation, you said. Mess? Is order not enough?
There’s the woodpecker’s mechanical tattoo on the dead, breaking only to scoff;
not silenced by grief for the one we found frozen in the trough under ice unlikely thick.
And that pied suburban parrot, strutting and chuckling, flirting its tail. One for
sorrow. I stop, and wait, and hope a second joins.
Kate Wise has been published in New Trad Journal, Prole, Angle, and StepAway magazines, and on Proletarian Poetry. She was commended in the 2013 Cafe Writers and 2014 Manchester Cathedral competitions, and placed third in the 2014 Ware Poets competition.