Magpies

There was an apple tree scored, carbon black,

on the sprawling prairie of winter sky.

Squinting at the pale disc of low slung sun

I caught the semaphore flicker, flick-flack.

Chequerboard glitter in a woodcut of jet

and a vast fragile blue, signaled a debut

of high-wire clowns; rowdy magpies arrayed

like sight gags in a comedy market.

Carnal-eyed, juice dripping from stabbing beaks,

they guzzled the last fermenting fruits,

rubies and garnets, fat as Christmas puddings,

and boozily performed their narrow squeaks.

I imagined a small god of gravity

stifling a guffaw at the imminent

pratfalls, and that each jab of a squiffy bird

must end in a crash of feathered debris.

I wish you’d seen how like Charlie Chaplin

they hoicked themselves from catastrophe’s brink,

flinging out a wing or tail for a cane,

swaying and woozy on twigs artery thin.

You’d have loved them for their comic bravery.

We might have laughed enough to let our past

slip quietly windblown into the dead grass,

but you were somewhere in the world, and lost to me.

This poem was first published by Aesthetica

© Peter Doyle 2014