We have a shifting population of flamingoes
sometimes thousands stalking together, rank upon rank so pink
or flying black and crimson in an undulating cloud
or gabbling like deep-voiced geese in the warm evening lake
sometimes a few score no more, deplorable umbrellas
shin-deep in cold water, leaning against the Christmas wind
their legs mauve in mud-coloured waves.
It is a country of its own, this marsh and the lagoon
although windscreens flash along a road that
divides it from the sea you sit there out of time
in an untouched primaeval bog.
Flamingoes and great rafts of coots, gulls of course, terns
and countless duck in the winter, even swans,
herons grey and purple, egrets, cormorants
these make up the mass
and this year an osprey has been there all summer
a shabby brown osprey on a given stump
doing nothing for hours but scratch and stare.
But in the spring and autumn tides the marsh
is even more full of life.
One day it will be harriers, hundreds of harriers sailing north
with black kites among them
another, ruffs and reeves among the greenshanks
and minute waders for the far far north
Grey plover, also due in the arctic tundra
Stilts.
Yet of all these none moves your heart like the peregrine
No doubt one should prefer the ringed plover or rather the dove
but a falcon clipping easy through the clear sky of autumn
travelling so fast, tracing a line as straight as a cord
stretched from the north horizon to the south
is in her way a trumpet-blast.
Always slightly fascist, stirred by trumpets stirred by drums
Old Adam loves a bird of prey.
Besides, that falcon in her pilgrimage
is running down to the northern edge of the summer
even to a new spring if she chooses,
and a slow earthbound creature, aging where he stands
cannot but gaze longing after that dark-eyed bird that arrow
her fierce effortless wings
flying flying
to renew her seasons to renew perhaps her youth.