Mary

I have taken up birdwatching in a more serious way in the last 2 years. As a result birds have begun to migrate stealthily into my poems almost without me realising. This poem began a series of three (I haven't written the other two!) exploring the supernatural revelations and visitations to Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah in the story of the nativity. Suddenly a falcon took the place of the angel Gabriel and it seemed to work.

Mary

A vast winter field under the sky,
Under crows bitter in the wind,
Under the hard erratic clouds,
Under the transparent night.

The world is annunciated
With bird. Grey bullet-bolt
From the heavens from which
Most scatter like rabbits.

Mary imagines God like the falcon
But cannot escape his grip,
Much softer than she thought
Whose release shows flesh
Open to the sky, the wind, the heavens.

Drawing breath

My father died this year. He was 89. About 2 years ago we had the first real scare and he began to show signs of real mortality. Like so many fathers he seemed, in my mind at least, to have done enough to suggest he was always going to be around despite the evidence.

Anyway, that day 2 years ago, he looked desperate and vulnerable, clutching an oxygen mask in a hospital ward.

Drawing breath

Draw, this word he used

for the urgency of fire,

the secret code for his deft magic,

his talismanic hand pivotin gus,

silently, motivating us around some

unsaid hearth of life

speaking of warmth and grace.

Draw now then! Draw this life

Into yourself, self-flickering man,

magic your own fire

without the conjurer's mask

whitening your hand.