Dream



Why wouldn't you look at my birds?
I'd placed them in plastic sleeves
and laid them out on the table,
at a distance to avoid the crumbs.
You'd have had to stand to look at them, sure.
The robin redbreast stood on a snowy branch.

Yesterdsy, I heard a bluetit's song.
Pyii, pyii, it went, the other side of hedge,
as if sucking oxygen. Sometimes
it flew inside the hedge,
a foot or so at a time. 'Bluetits
don't sing,' you said. Your birdfeed hangs

limply from the garden wall. Nuts, grain
in convenient beakfuls. There's no
bird that'll go near it.