A Blackbird in June

Night and morn these solstice days
A blackbird in a silver birch
Carols loudly. In pre-dawn haze
And evening gloaming, his clear song                          
Like dropping water from his perch
Sprinkles the garden’s crowding baize                     
Purifying its blood and dung.                                         

Chattering, the bright-eyed sparrow

And stiff-legged starlings, richly pompous,                        
Have franchise on the streets and harrow
Fiercely for scraps; and through the day
Pigeon and bold robins make rumpus
In the gardens: it’s dawn and narrow
Twilight that the blackbird holds sway.                   

At four o’morn the light is brown,                                 

The grinning fox and rats retreat;                                    
At once the blackbird buffs his crown
With many-fluted thrills of sound;
And later in the day’s-end heat
He’ll treble in his cantor’s gown                            
Till dusk dies of a blood-red wound.                       

This longest day and shallow night,

These blackbird’s tuned intricacies
Embody health which salves the bite
Of the fox’s bloodied tooth; but come
December with its frozen leaves, 
The blackbird’s song in blackest night 
Will choke, struck down by the wind’s drum. 

====================

© June 2013