Readers Choices

WINNER ISSUE 121

Gazing on May Day – Wendy Webb

I could swear I heard the nightingale last night,
for it was thronging gardens all day long
and later, after dark.

I had no name, but thought all woodlands
crowded into chorus
within one bird: whose every note
rang silence of soliloquy to one.

I heard the robin and the blackbird there,
but wondered if I knew the thrushes’ cry.
Each warning peewooed brave as any lord
of nature, loudly with his battle cry.

I thought he was the mimic of sweet airs
and harsh reminders of companioned song.
Yet he rang high, all screened by leafing oaks
and seemed to call a mate from the four winds.

For days, my garden, blessed by angel choirs
of solitude upon a single note –
and then all-early for Bank Holiday,
to load the garden rubbish for the dump,
and there he was again.
My mate abandoned,
to load the car’s dull solitary pile
of half a year’s rubbish, compressed in spring.
There I saw him: noble on a branch

a shade against the sky, with a white throat.
A pointed beak, fine tail
and body’s tone,
a swift of sleekness on the utmost crown
of wood and sky which crosses night to day.
I saw him sing –
all fearless, brave and plain;
as endless morning light when dark is done.

My Field Guide helped a little,
yet his note
rang silent as last ring of Compline’s bell;
and, if sweet Romeo and Juliet
could declare this was a nightingale – to lark
a little longer, honeymooned in love, then so will I.

I’ve watched the lark
that flames all cotton into clouds of sound.
It was no lark; nor robin; nor a blackbird;
and mimicked all of life within the woods.
All voices silent in its ocean sound:
of everything as absence, when it flew.

Sweet Ruth, I chaff and bend beneath the stars,
of last night’s coloured solar garden lights.
The TV was too dull to mute his dark.
His pee-oo, tchaks and whooeets. All were gone.

Then every blackbird sounded like a crow.
A coffee break / a lifetime. All too long