I’m in hock for a poem, so I’m doing two today.
This poem was inspired by awesome friend and poet Kate Garrett, who is apparently getting a sparrow skeleton sent to her by a friend. I guess the references to Bird anatomy and decay are sciencey. If you don’t want to think about dead birds and what happens to them so they can become skeletons, look away now.
I found you on the doorstep
Small, brown and unremarkable.
Your siblings in the hedge howling a dirge
That sounded cheerful only
To human ears.
The cat coldly observed my actions
Daring me to spurn the gift of you.
I cradled you in fingertips, noting
The smell. Not unlike the time
I bought chicken fillets
Forgot about them in my bag
And found them, days later.
How long had you been there?
I don’t know why I marvelled at your lightness
Of course, you were airborne once.
But for a moment I felt
that if I only threw you skyward
The wings would remember
And away you’d go.
I buried you.
A funeral seemed like needless anthropomorphism
The dustbin, somehow disrespectful.
I dug a hole in the flowerbed
(Having distracted the cat with sardines in his bowl
So he wouldn’t see my ingratitude)
I dropped you in, and covered you.
You rested in the earth about a year.
I often thought of you
Googled: how quickly do feathers decay?
Imagined maggots feasting
If I saw a housefly
I’d wonder if it owed its life to you.
Until one day, a friend
Wrote with dark beauty
Of the bewitched fragility of bird bones
Of her desire to hold them in her hands
I could not leave you longer in the ground.
Archaeology: I dug with fingers
Afraid to touch you, more afraid to break you
You were further down than I remembered
And not as rotted as I had expected.
But still, I cleaned you gently,
Put you on the windowsill to bleach
(I shut the cat out, in case he remembered)
I loved you for your beauty.
Somehow, alive, you had been commonplace.
But now, in death, you had become angelic.
I wrapped you in black silk.
(As much for the touch of the gothic
That would make my friend smile
As to protect you)
I laid you in a box of cotton wool
And sent you flying.
Tom Juniper Poetry 