This is a poem I wrote about a scene I watched from my kitchen window while doing the dishes. It was on a recent Spring evening, just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the trees. It had been a sunny day and crucially, I’d just cut the grass earlier that day.
I looked up to see a couple of blackbirds, which on closer inspection I could see were a male and a female. So, channeling my inner Cilla Black (one for older readers there and an old TV matchmaker if you don’t know) I immediately placed them together. Man and wife, if you like. A mam and dad, probably, foraging for food for their newborn Spring chicks. The birds love it when the grass has been cut; I’m not entirely sure why.
The fact that they were at opposite ends of the garden and that their movements were both graceful and jerky, yet obviously on the same wavelength reminded me of dancers in a ballroom. It was something I remembered days later when I had the time to start drafting the poem. Here it is.
Blackbirds
The lights dim and a sultry dance begins in the garden ballroom, tentative at first, but gaining pace and rhythm as the minutes pass. Trees sway and rustle in the evening breeze, an audience inspired to move, adding occasional ripples of polite applause as our pairing settle to a tantalising flirtation, at first far apart, yet soon together tripping the light fantastic, their dark figures striking a pose, drawing ever closer with each beat of the dying sun and as the light sighs its last this dance will reach collapse and these two distant partners, now nestled close, will return to the humdrum beat of their something else, their everyday a life away from this brief, glamorous scene until time and hunger dictates they should do it all again.
The idea with the poem was to use an extended metaphor of a ballroom and a pair of dancers to describe what was essentially two blackbirds out getting food. It was the way they moved, almost in tandem, that inspired the idea of the ‘sultry dance’ in the ‘garden ballroom’ and then it became a challenge to add as many dance references as I could so that a poem was formed.
It’s the second time I’ve written about blackbirds as I like to watch them in the garden. They can be quite territorial and there have been several occasions when one has flown way too close, squawking at me as if to warn me off. I don’t think they understand the idea of home ownership! Anyway, maybe somehow they’ll sense that I’m writing about them and make me the honorary president of their fanclub!
I quite like this poem. I’d have liked to spend more time drafting, but given time constraints – I’m a busy boy at the minute – I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Maybe it’s one I’ll return to in time. I hope you like it too though!
It’s the Easter holidays and as I’ve got some time on my hands I decided to sit down and try and write something for the blog. Other commitments have been getting in the way of late and so my blog has been very much neglected.
So, with not a lot in mind to write about, I thought I’d trawl through some notebooks and accompanying scraps of paper in order to see what poetry I have knocking about. It turns out that there are quite a few that have either been started or simply finished and then just left and so, after quite a bit of reading I decided to add this one to the blog. It brings back a lot of memories and I really like it.
Willow
As the spots of rain get heavier and begin to change the colour of the roads and pavements around, you scramble for the familiar shelter of the giant old weeping willow.
Everyone is out, the house locked up, but you chose friends, football and the top of the hill Wembley of a pub car park over the visit to family, and now that team mates have chosen bricks and mortar for cover, solitude in nature is forced upon you.
A mass of leaves and sagging branches provide ample sanctuary, so you position yourself so not to be seen from either road or the neighbour's house, shift your knees up to your chest and enjoy this place where there is no shouting, no conflict and no storm of any kind.
The willow tree in question here is the one that we had in the garden of my childhood home. Everyone else regarded it as a nuisance because of its sheer size and mass of leaves that would be shed in autumn and litter the surrounding area, but I loved it.
I’d play in it as a small child, inventing games and characters and swinging on those branches. As I got older it became somewhere to hide and just be on my own, away from what I remember now, rightly or wrongly, as a lot of shouting and anger in our house. Sometimes, as in the poem, it was just a convenient shelter of a different kind as the rain just didn’t seem to get through it. As I got older, I’d often stay at home when my parents went across to see family, but would rarely remember to take a key. These things got forgotten when there was a game of football about to start! And so, I’d end up just sitting under the tree to escape the elements.
In later years, after we had moved out, the tree was cut down. I still kind of miss it to this day.
I’ve found myself noticing quite a lot of things that could be filed under the heading of ‘Nature’ of late. I imagine it’s the fact that Spring has most definitely sprung, which in turn has meant that I’ve spent more time outside in our garden as well as more time simply gazing out of windows, getting distracted. And as a result, I’ve noticed a few regular visitors are back to welcome in the warm weather and plunder the supply of nuts and fat balls kept in our feeders!
I wrote the following poem about one of the visitors that I love to sit and watch, because I realised that their visits were increasing in frequency and with that, it got me thinking about the times I will simply stop what I’m doing and spend a few minutes trying to figure out what they’re up to.
Twilight Blackbird
The air is just beginning to chill a little, raise the hair on the arms
as you strut your stuff,
a lone figure surveying all you rule in the dying light,
keeping a watchful eye out for the squirrels, the thrush
and those sly cul-de-sac cats that would gladly use you as a plaything
before presenting you as a lifeless gift on a welcome mat.
But you're better than that.
You stalk the perimeter, watching for flies, ants or maybe the appearance of
the ultimate prize, a succulent worm.
No creature can suspect you're there
as you dance a delicate tango under the disco ball moon,
hopping, prancing, creeping, darting, scampering
through a series of steps that you've honed over the years,
perfected as time ticked by until
Spring's annual yawn signals your entrance to the floor,
a flash of gold amongst the plush inky feathers,
capturing hearts as well as prey
and enchanting all whose eyes you catch.
We seem to have a number of blackbirds that visit the garden at this time of year. I don’t know if it’s literally just a couple of males and females – they all look the same! – or several families, but you can’t help but notice them. They’re quite bold too, despite appearing fairly skittish as you watch them. The ones I see will venture fairly close if I’m actually in the garden and on to our patio if I happen to be at the window, yet it doesn’t take a lot to spook them either.
Watching them, I found myself quite entertained, so that’s where the references to dance and theatrics come in with the poem. They just move differently; not quite graceful, but not particularly clumsy either. Yet, it all looks very well rehearsed and if I’m stood washing the dishes I can find myself getting distracted just watching their antics. I’ve realised too that I more or less always say ‘Hello’ to blackbirds and so it felt fitting when I began scribbling down a few notes, that I should write a poem about them.
As usual, feel free to leave a comment or two and thanks for spending some time reading in my little area of the internet!
Spring brings with it many jobs, especially if you have a garden. And it was while embarking on some jobs in our back garden that I encountered a somewhat unwanted visitor, just the other day.
As I’m currently on holiday from work – it’s our Easter break – I thought that it was about time I got stuck into some of the more difficult jobs that needed attending to. Principal among them was cutting our back lawn, which I had allowed to get to an out of control kind of length. I do this every year; tell myself that it’s too early for mowing the lawn when it’s reasonably dry in March and then watch on in relative horror as it rains for weeks and the lawn grows and grows. By the time I’d got the lawn mower out last week, it was around a foot high in most places, meaning that this would be a big job!
I’d actually prepared fairly well for this task, making sure that our garden waste bin had been put out for collection the night before, so that it was completely empty when I started the job. However, as I repeatedly emptied the basket on the mower it looked more and more like I was going to run out of space. I turned to our compost bin but that too began to fill up quickly.
I then began to push the grass cuttings down, hoping that such compression would create the space I needed in the garden bin. It didn’t work. And then I was struck by what I thought was a very clever idea. Taking the lid off our compost bin, I got the garden sheers out, inserted them into the pile of grass cuttings and trimmings from various shrubs and began to chop away. It worked and the level of the ‘compost’ began to drop. But not nearly enough.
Warming to my task, I went to the shed, got my garden fork as well as a weed digging tool and began to push them down into the compost, twisting and turning in order to mix it all up and hopefully make some of it drop downwards. Again, it worked and this time well enough to allow me to get carried away, delving the tools repeatedly down into the bin. And then it happened…
To a terrifying mouse
I have climbed mountains,
clung on as if my very life depended on it while others screamed with joy
on rollercoasters,
peered nervously over the edge of perilous waterfalls,
flown in a seaplane very much against my better judgement,
hurtled headlong down steep, snowy hills
on a makeshift tarpaulin toboggan,
faced down bullies,
been confronted by an angry rattlesnake,
had desks thrown at me by frustrated pupils in a failing school
and argued with an Ofsted inspector, despite being warned never to do this by those who knew better than me,
but I have never felt fear like that felt when a tiny mouse scurried out
of our compost bin and escaped over my foot.
No more than three inches in length
from snuffling nose to tiny tail,
as I cowered, this timorous beastie,
no doubt far more scared of me than I of he,
disappeared behind a pile of bricks to sanctuary,
whilst I screamed like a child, yet cursed like a pirate
and promptly cut my finger on the edge of the compost bin,
on reflection a fair penance for my ridiculous behaviour.
Later, as I slept, it crept into my dreams,
turning them into nightmares,
leaving me to smile ruefully next morning at the memory,
while silently hoping to never encounter it again.
I’m slightly ashamed to say it, but I got the shock of my life when I realised what was happening. I spotted the blur that turned out to be a tiny mouse out of the corner of my eye. Then I felt it run across my foot. It couldn’t have been there long however, due to a combination of the speed of the mouse and me leaping into the air in shock!
Later, after I’d told my wife and children about our little garden visitor, I started thinking about how I could turn the whole encounter into a piece of writing, settling on a poem. By the time I’d got to the writing things down stage I’d decided that I’d start with a list of scary experiences, then compare this to what had happened that afternoon with the mouse. I sat listing things I’d done that had caused me tension or fear before thinking about how I’d get on to the mouse.
The one thing that sprang to mind was the first line of the poem ‘To a mouse’ by Robert Burns and how he described the mouse as a ‘beastie’, which made it sound much more scary than it was in his poem. I liked the idea of my mouse being a ‘beastie’, just because it gave me some such a shock and so I decided to use that line, but play around with it a little bit. So instead of the mouse being ‘cow’ring’ I thought it would be better used to describe me and just left the mouse as a ‘timorous beastie’ like Burns had.
The fact that I then dreamt about the mouse that night helped me confirm my thoughts of it as threatening! In the dream I could almost feel the mouse on my feet and it actually woke me up! It definitely made me smile the next morning and had to be included in the poem once I wrote it up as some kind of first draft.
I’m pleased with how this poem has turned out and I have to say that I really enjoyed drafting it and then putting the finishing touches to it. I hope you enjoyed it too!
This was a poem that was prompted by a lesson I taught recently. Sometimes we use images as a prompt when doing creative writing. We’ve been doing it recently with Years 10 and 11; giving them an image and discussing what we can see and how we might describe it as well as getting them to think about what you might hear there, how it might feel etc. The aim here was to be able to give them a way into a narrative, a place to start before they began building tension or drama or whatever else it was that they wanted to build in there.
The idea for the poem came when I was teaching a small intervention group and discussing an image with a student. We concentrated on the image at the top of this page. Once we’d done with our discussion I gave them time to write and given that it was in exam conditions, quickly found myself with little to do. So, I started jotting down notes about the image with the intention of adding them to the lesson for next time that I taught it.
The poem came later. I hadn’t yet used the notes, but came across them at the end of the day on a bit of paper while I was gathering up stray worksheets and stuff for recycling. I took it home – it was just some sentences and observations about the things in the image – and sat down with it later on to write the poem underneath.
Pushing Out to Sea
As day breaks only the occasional whispered chatter of three tired fishermen,
or a shambling step displacing pebbles on the track breaks the silence.
Not quite day, not quite night, not quite still.
At the shoreline they yawn and stretch before dragging their boats towards the shore and into the shallows, feet wet, limbs already aching.
On the water, the light from each boat gives birth to a dappled golden fish reflected on the surface, stretching across the lake.
Hopefully a good luck charm for a catch yet to come.
The breaking sun spatters the dark of the sky with Jackson Pollock pinks, reds and oranges as a chill breeze welcomes the men to the water.
Soon, the warmth of the sun will toast their bones again and make them feel alive.
I really liked the image. There was lots going on; the mountains in the background, the light on the water, the colours of the sky, the men and their boats. But as well as the image I found myself thinking about the sounds and what it would feel like to be there.
I decided to focus on the men and the reasons why they were there, deciding that this was work rather than some kind of hobby. I liked the idea of them making their way to the lake, still groggy from waking up and almost hypnotically going through the motions in order to get out on to the water. Sometimes, the body functions and then we look back and wonder exactly how we got to where we are. Or maybe that’s just me. I don’t mind mornings, but I find that I’m not the most sparkling company at that time of day and going through the motions is very much my way of operating until a certain point. This made me draw parallels with the fishermen and I decided that in the same way as a class coming in to my room can be like flicking a switch for me, they would only really switch on when they’d got to their destination and started fishing for the day. By that time, the sun would be up.
I didn’t want to write a long poem that took in their fishing simply because I haven’t much idea how they would go about fishing. It doesn’t look like a rod based activity, judging by the image, so I thought better of trying to guess. I was satisfied with what I’d got down up to that point and that the poem had quite a positive ending.
As ever, I hope that you enjoyed reading. Feel free to leave a comment, good or bad, as it’s always constructive to get some feedback.
This is a poem I wrote about a month ago and as such, it was based more on what I knew was going to happen, rather than actually watching it happen.
It’s a poem about watching the year pass, I suppose. It came about because where I sit at our dining table gives me a lovely view of our garden. So if I’m working there, I might well drift off to watching what’s happening, or in the morning I’ll quite often gaze out of the window if I’m waiting for the kettle to boil or the toast to pop up. So obviously, I see a lot of change during the year.
The poem came about because I was looking at a particular tree and reminding myself that it needs to be pruned. This is a thought I have from around January every year, as this particular tree can block out quite a bit of sunlight. So every year I vow that it’s going to get cut back. And every year I fail.
The poem starts in Spring. I love Spring. It’s the season that gives that suggestion of new life, year in year out. And with this tree, it’s the season where I either admit defeat or spring – no pun intended – into life and manage to cut back a few branches before getting overwhelmed by the amount of foliage I’ll have to compost or the amount of insect life that ends up in my hair, eyes and mouth.
I find that I’ve got through Winter, with it’s freezing cold walks and runs, its snow days and its lack of daylight and that everything starts to feel better with Spring. There are the obvious signs, like the shoots of plants emerging from previously frozen soil, blossom on the trees and that sort of thing. The weather gets better too. Usually, here in England, it gets better to the point where you begin to kid yourself that we’ll get a scorching hot summer, which as we all know, is never the case! But Spring is definitely a time for optimism.
So while the poem is about change, it’s more about one of the trees in my back garden and I guess, (if we’re going to try and intellectualise things!) the relationship that we have.
Circle
Every Spring you burst into life, disappointing me with leaves that will become back ache later in the year.
Your foliage, however, quickly becomes something more captivating than irritating,
teeming with life and becoming a canvas to admire, like a masterpiece in some far away gallery.
Your enthusiasm for life kickstarts mine and accompanied by the sun, I am far more diligent in filling
up the feeders that bring birds to your branches, like day trippers to a Bank Holiday beach.
It will stay this way for months, as greedy beaks plunder your hospitality and we sit, camera at the ready,
awaiting a prompt for creativity.
Slowly at first, your metamorphosis begins, picking up the pace as the visits of the sun decrease.
And as they do, my own footsteps slow too. The birds too become a burden if it means a visit to a cold, wet garden.
Like an ageing film star your beauty fades with time and I turn my attention elsewhere,
knowing that before too long your leaves will demand it again.
And then, as the wind howls and the rain has nothing of yours left to spatter against, I am forced out to you
repeatedly in order to clean up your fallen grace.
When eventually my grudging enthusiasm withers, mutters and dies, a carpet of leaf mulch will form,
turning green to browns and blacks, but giving a squirrel a somewhat less than glamorous pantry.
While the light hours of my days are spent elsewhere you slowly spring to life once more as the circle turns.
As buds appear, I sense a missed opportunity and might even, in a frenzied quarter hour, cut away the odd branch
left at arm's length or those that a daredevil few moments on a step ladder may allow me to stretch to,
before nerves and a fear of falling get the better of me and I decide you look just fine.
But every year you escape to grow back those curls, welcome back an abundance of life and steal the light
away from late afternoons, sat in a favourite chair.
And with every passing year I will concede to another defeat and sit back, relax
and stare at all you bring to life.
There’s not much to add here. Not much to try and explain, as I think it’s a fairly simple and straightforward poem.
I called the poem ‘Circle’ because it’s quite a cyclical poem. It’s about the seasons; about a life cycle, I suppose. So, I arrived at ‘Circle’ because of that, but also because I begun to realise that I’m terrible at naming my poems. I’m also terrible at headlines for my articles and book reviews too. At first I called the poem ‘The Problem with Spring’ but then changed my mind when I re-read it and found that it wasn’t just about Spring after all. In my notebook it’s simply called ‘Tree’, but then I thought about trying to get people to read it and the tweet that would go out telling the world, ‘I wrote a poem about a tree’ and wondering why even less people than usual were reading! ‘Seasons Change’ was taken from a Buffalo Tom song, so I ditched that to avoid plagiarism. ‘Seasons’ was almost as bad as ‘Tree’ and ‘Cycle’ gave the entirely wrong impression, so I went with ‘Circle’. It’s still not great and I’m still not happy, but it’s done now!
The tree isn’t a particularly interesting tree. I’ve lived in the house for 23 years and I still couldn’t tell you what kind of tree it is, in fact! It’s not particularly striking or lovely. And yet, there are times, when the sun is streaming through the leaves and birds are hopping between branches, that it really is beautiful. In fact, it was probably one of these moments that led me to write the poem.
As ever, I’d love to know what people think of the poem. And the name, of course!
Here in the U.K. our first lockdown was quite the experience to go through. It was often eerily quiet with the majority of people unable to work. Large swathes of the population simply stayed indoors and those of us who took our daily exercise allowance found that the streets were often theirs.
Within weeks, people started noticing that in amongst all the quiet, birdsong was prominent. Suddenly, with no traffic noise, the sound of birds singing and chirping became noticeably louder. And I think lots of us found that fantastic. At the time, the weather was great and I can distinctly remember that we would do our Joe Wicks workout from 9am and then afterwards we’d go and do some stretches to warm down in the garden. Listening to the birds at that point become a regular part of our day.
Life has moved on since that point. We’re back in lockdown, but there’s a distinct difference; more people out and about, more cars and less in the way of wildlife as a result. This all changed for a fantastic few minutes for me on a recent Sunday afternoon. The pictures tell the story, but I’ll fill in the gaps. I had been meaning to fill up our bird feeders for a couple of weeks, but just hadn’t got round to it. However, I had a bit of time on this particular Sunday, so I wrapped up and out I went. As soon as I’d done, I felt like I was being watched. And then I heard some beautiful birdsong. Closer inspection of our tree revealed a small bird and when I watched for a further few seconds, I could see it was a robin. What happened next was just lovely and the poem tell the tale for me.
Close Encounter
I hear you before I see you,
a bright chirping preceding your bright feathers,
and then, only feet away, fearless, your red breast makes you known.
The feeders full, you're first to the banquet,
yet it seems you want to pause a while to chat.
I move slowly, but needn't bother as you simply stand and stare,
perfectly relaxed about our meeting despite your vulnerability.
Perhaps you're thanking me for the food.
Perhaps you're just wondering why I'm still here and why this took so long.
I neither know nor care; you've made my day,
brightened a cold and gloomy Sunday afternoon.
Robin. Little bird not even the size of a tennis ball,
yet bold enough to sit within arms length and attempt to hold a conversation,
I could stay here and stare at you for hours.
It doesn’t seem like much happened, but it was just a lovely few minutes. I didn’t even think to write about it until I posted some pictures of the robin on social media and a friend suggested it. Thanks Ruth!
I can’t stress enough just how close this bird got. I think it comes out in the images, but, if it doesn’t it was about three feet away. Close enough to make itself known, but far enough away to show it was still a little wary of me.
At first, as I tried to take pictures, the robin jumped down from the tree and would settle on a branch of a shrub below just long enough for me to see it, and then jump off. It was like it was toying with me. Then, after a minute or so, it just perched on a branch just above head height and started to sing at me, allowing me to click away and take some pictures. Annoyingly, I didn’t think to video it, instead spending a few minutes just watching – and yes, alright, I talked to it as well – before heading back inside, content to leave the robin alone and go and tell my wife about what had just happened.
I’m hoping to see it again and have another chat this weekend. Let me know what you think of the poem in the comments.
Middle Age Fanclub 