My voice now has this minikin flutey quality
and a needling sound where the wind careens through it.

Did you remember the seed? my bird wife cheep cheeped
when I arrived home clutching the shopping in my wings,

and a smile gambolled on her stiff beak lips.
(Her lack of expression drives me so crazy for her sometimes!)

Other birds slide and climb and slip inside clouds and out again,
and land on roofs or trees

or on the parochial ground. My bird wife has laid out
brittle wombs – three serene blue prams.

Our nest is stupendous, instinctive. There they nestle. Inside one,
sky rumbles wet, sky rumbles hard.

It’s calling, she says.
Listen. Touch it with your peculiar flat-hammered fingers.

Mark Waldron