Wintering

Gathering

Echoing strangely today within my reviewing mind,
in this lull before Christmas (when we wait on
big ticket deliveries, check how much
tax we have to pay in the New Year,
hungover, pocketsful of festive holes)
the eager twittering of the assembling birds
now I have started feeding them again,
(though it's warm enough for them to worm
and apples yet fully to rot beyond a peck's-worth).

The blackbird's surreptitious hop to glide
a silent stealth by trellis to the hedge,
the sparrow's bold leap to the apple trees
a mere yard from the platform - no more -
gathering of many birds in next door's thorn,
squabbling and shifting their perches...

I wonder if it's just the cats, that of late
have strolled through to the trellis gap
at the back and thence to the fence,
have made my garden such a no-go zone,
since, say, two years ago I hardly fed them
but for the odd scrap to scrap over - yet
they were bold (or tame) with me enough.
Or have I changed, become more ogrish,
to their way of seeing, anyway?

When Catherine left  that April, think somehow
they knew how much I needed them,
tuned to their music and their presence,
the still figure sitting at the table,
day after day, seeking some redemption
in the real, for having strayed too far
among the channels of another's fantasies,
reward for such devotion being a ditch,
for 'Dear John', 'Poor-John', 'little bit of bread
and no cheese'*. A twit. A sap. A nutter.
Bitter witter - need some better butter?

And most of all the blackbirds' fluted
caroling,* bearing me away beyond my pain.

...........................

*'Little bit of bread and no cheese' I remember, from childhood,  was the comic mimesis for  a yellowhammer's  song, I believe (not that I have yellowhammers in the garden). 

*Blackbirds don't sing in winter, save  a few scraps to think about the  year to come, from cover.