The Fourth Day of Christmas

28 December
 
At shadowless noon
every fence post has a muffin top,
 
rooks have phoned in sick,
huffed up like draught excluders,
 
and even the ivy can't be arsed
to scavenge the grey photons.
 
A buzzard is quartering her day,
checking the thank you letters
 
of small creatures, whose best joined-up
smokes out of novelty pencils;
 
when she finds a phrase that pleases
she'll stoop to put a red tick on the snow.


Nick MacKinnon



Mum's Garden
December
 
Okay to the thirteen green parakeets
on the bare apple tree
still noisily celebrating their ancestral
break-out from the bird sanctuary.
 
Okay to the woodpecker
with red cockade
feasting on lawn grubs
for over an hour.
 
Okay, of course,
to the usual thrushes, magpies,
crows and reservoir-seagulls –
 
But, Mum, you have to be kidding –
 
at the very top of the tallest fir tree,
one ungainly fairy
on the green xmas tree,
hunch-perched heron surveying
the edibility scene –
 
(no garden hereabouts
without its goldfish pond ) –
 
contemptuous
of  crows and  seagulls
ganging up to shout –
 
No Herons Allowed!
 
taking his time,
then launching, all gateleg-table foldable legs,
long beak and greybeard wings,
into the breakfast-time sky,
 
grace under pressure indeed…
 
Who’d think this treetop gawk
would have such ballet-work in him,
our light-fantastic visitant?


Penelope Shuttle