Three unpublished bird poems

Working through some unpublished bird poems for future collections, I have chosen to share the following trio as they are quite apt for the time of year, and I happen to have a photograph appropriate for each. I hope you like them!

BULLFINCH

With a belly like a bottle of port

this birch-basking, blood-bibbed bird,

nut-sucking connoiseur,

struts poshly over hedges,

plumply patrols herb gardens

like a portly Justice-of-the-Peace.

LONG TAILED TITS, EARLY MORNING AT THE STATION

Notes of mousy music,

you bounce the branches

of deciduous staves,

flip and float,

trapezing trees

in haphazard dances –

 

flighty types,

brown clowns,

impetuous imps,

you jump and trick,

skip twigs so quick,

bob and hop

and polka-dot the dawn.

DUNNOCK

Dusky dove, your pebbly breast

a mist-bruised, ash, star-pimpled sky,

you tilt a beak, as if fly-catching,

slide-fly into a tunnel of tree,

and merge into its woody kiss.