Clutch
The cycle of engendering
Is spinning in the windowbox.
With the base of a blackbird hen
Nature had penned
One of her few perfect circles,
Wherein, like a compass
With cardinals working askew,
Four hatchlings toiled,
Stubbly grubs
In space, without an eye between them.
Soon, expanding,
Each took on an edge,
Gasps and blabs of down
Sharpened to terms,
Their proto-pinions plied together.
Now pleroma,
The final full of their straw
Sphere, approaches fast,
Whose elements hold
Faster the more invertebrates they eat.
Hairy crucifer
Waving wide, when the dark
Body of dam or sire
Beams down,
Their world blooms a lid of mouths.
Which petal gullets
However, never mistake
Any other for self.
The common code
Is food for one and all for food.
Earth-coloured
And aware, to step outside
Contracts them to a tuft,
A cake betrayed
By one or two black stares.
The
gyre of generation
Turns beside the door,
Oiled with the lusting of four
Squeaking spokes.
A cyclist passes. The sway of her ––
John Gibbens, from The Promise
Go
to the Trading Post to buy The Promise
