Having been visited yesterday by a wren, I have to be happy with little glimpses of wildlife here. Anyway, the mention of a buzzard that was amazing Russell yesterday on the phone, was enough to get me writing.
Buzzard
It sits, on a tree stump
or a weathered post, hunched
in its oversized feather jacket.
Buzzard is the collective
noun for feather dusters.
It stretches banded wings,
feeling for the air, the uplift
pulling, unfolding into the sky.
It wheels like linked hands
fingering the clouds.
Rabbits corkscrew into brambles,
pigeons tremble, fat, against tree trunk,
nest, wall. Raiding parties form,
of crows, or rooks, that harry
it from above the meat-hooks.
In summer its rag bag children
follow, hawking death clumsily
missing, crashing into the grass;
striking trees in explosions of leaves.
Rip and squabble over the dead.
One mistook a paper sculpture,
a papier-mâché pig, fat and brown
on our windowsill, and fell,
then understood and threw out
five foot wingspanned brakes.
A buzzard eclipse, as it darkened
six panes of glass, claws clicking
before folding into shrubs,
to scramble unhurt, ruffled;
to derisive shrieks overhead.
By late autumn, the buzzard,
paired and childless, having driven
off competing marauders,
hangs in the last summer thermals,
circles, adjusting a single feather.
Love the collective noun bit!
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