Inspiration
In the garden
playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong
I became aware the bee-hum
was louder, harder, more urgent
I could feel it in my teeth
and I looked up to see the sky
was thick with noise and swirling,
but before I got into the house
the swarm passed.
‘quelea’
At the Malawi/Tanzania border
I stepped out of the bus
and saw dark wisps
moving across the sky.
They were birds, sparrow-sized,
and each wisp was hundreds
or thousands. As each wisp left,
another appeared, and another
and another and another.
While we were there, I thought
perhaps 500 000 birds
flew over us, give or take
a hundred thousand.
Red-billed Quelea.
Not many species
can be identified
by numbers alone.
When I tried to interest my friends
in one of nature
| dawnlight shines on the webwet | a fur of globes – pricked with shimmer — cold to the sole – as the shade slips back to itself | throaty effervescence of blackbird – orange and black — agape | darkness marks the walked on | a contrail ghosts the thinblue – spreads to air | stilled nymphs — unflying – a damsel clings the lilybud |
Passing traffic lifts
a blizzard of cherry petals.
Poetry in Motion
but poetry is too slow to catch
the moment when a striker
sprints onto a pass, looks one way
to fake the goalie
and slides the ball
into the other corner of the net;
or when a batsman sees
the bouncer coming,
leans back, and lifts his hands
to crack the ball for six.
How odd, that combination
of adrenalin and calm;
Hector must have been like that
when, in the noise of battle,
he turned, and with a graceful sweep,
crashed his sword into the neck
of Patroclus.
I didn’t write a poem today –
I cooked instead
and it was better.