Goldfinch

The week before we left our other house
one visited our garden. On the branch
across the window where the sparrows, wren,
robin and bluetit had come regularly
throughout our sojourn there, on this one day
the bright fire of a goldfinch burned. He came,
he would have spoken if he had had language,
and then he went. The books say that at times
the goldfinch does a circuit of an area,
checking out rowan or cotoneaster,
­ no doubt that was it. We had been thinking
perhaps our birds would notice when we'd gone
and soon we went, with memories of the garden
and the goldfinch we had seen just once.


Swallows


Swallows are home at the many eaved inn
at a country lane-end in summer.

It is impossible not to invent their gladness to be home,
not to see them check their corners,
visit the sparrows, swoop over buttercups,

wait for the publican to arrive,
and after the publican the customers,
old Joe and old Bill and Susan,
agree on their nesting ledges over windows and doors

impossible not to notice them caulking nest-cracks with mud
collected with fluttering grace from the field-path

impossible not to believe in their jubilant triumph
at the subsequent miniature faces
peeping over the rim of the trusted nests

impossible not to try to imagine
what it felt like, the flight to Africa
for the beatiful, able, intelligent swallows
it is not possible to follow.

Sally Evans