A new home in Rye has sent me on long walks along the shore and long waits in wooden hides, starting to learn the names and ways of the many different birds who live here or pass through. Like me, many of them move from one home to another, flap-flap-glide through my thoughts, find perches in my poems.
Waterbird
I’ll remember you as a tufted duck
shaking out your feathers fresh from a dive.
You turn to show your snowy flank,
punkish crest and gold eye,
give me a a sideways look.
Another time I find you in a flotilla
of shovelers, scooping the dark shallows
of a flooded quarry. I won’t forget
your hunchy neck, your green face, how
you charm me with flatworms.
Some days you’re plover neat, rounded
and ringed, and wedded to the shore.
Sometimes you’re egret elegant until,
with a chuckle, you flash your sunshine feet.
Published in the Sussex Wildlife Trust anthology, 'Water'
sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/go-wild-at-home/creative-nature-writing/water-anthology-2023
Waterbird
I’ll remember you as a tufted duck
shaking out your feathers fresh from a dive.
You turn to show your snowy flank,
punkish crest and gold eye,
give me a a sideways look.
Another time I find you in a flotilla
of shovelers, scooping the dark shallows
of a flooded quarry. I won’t forget
your hunchy neck, your green face, how
you charm me with flatworms.
Some days you’re plover neat, rounded
and ringed, and wedded to the shore.
Sometimes you’re egret elegant until,
with a chuckle, you flash your sunshine feet.
Published in the Sussex Wildlife Trust anthology, 'Water'
sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/go-wild-at-home/creative-nature-writing/water-anthology-2023
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