After the last gleam on the hill
the cluckers in the dusk,
___________________calling,
"Chucka-pucka-puck!"
__________________clattering
through snapping twigs so startling
at our urgent footsteps,
____________________their will
so bent on crowing-out,
___________________take fright
instead: "Ge'-back, ge'-back!" in flight,
wings thrumming such lurches airborne,
down below ridges birches perch on,
tall, ghosted-gaunt, bare-wired, leaf-spent
or firework-leaved with dusk-glow blent,
pattern dimming to silhouette.
Deep below, past rolling, folded
fields fresh-stubbled, late crops taken,
calls haunt on to coverts
____________________molded
round brooks and ditches,
_____________________spreading yet
across lowland to plain margins,
plaintive refrains discovering
(far echoes of their signal-words)
the vast extent of hidden birds.
YOU ARE READING
Wintering
PoetryIt's yet another MajorSeventh. Hop on the big shoulders and look ... Lastest poems are always posted last in my collections. Winter. So, expect sparse gardens, late autumn and wintry countryside, wry philosophy and humour, tenderness towards litt...
