*a poem from Alice Allen. In our conflict-ridden world, I think often – though not often enough, and with little action – about how many children are living in permanent hunger – including those in peaceful poverty-stricken places in my own community. We can feed everyone on this blue and green and brown orb, we just have to find the will to do it.
In those days … I’d go collecting
all seven years of me up a tree
the sweet stink of my fingers
prising for a nest.
I’d bring the eggs down in my mouth
blackbird sparrow tit
common birds nothing fancy.
Marbles on my tongue
One nest in particular
a wren’s
made from green leaf and feather
a freshness
spun into a dome
of dainty wicker work I had to break
to find the speckled eggs
five of them mine.
I’d be home before curfew
blowing them by the stove
a sleek sack of goo hitting the saucer shell intact.
A quietness after.
Curfew the word itself was like a bird
bringing the night in its beak.
Sometimes we’d hear the soldiers
firing in the moonlight.
on maneuvers
marching down our lane.
And when that last winter siege comes
I lie in bed hungry as a stone
the covers so cold they feel wet
as if all the woodland streams
run through the room
and cup around the bed
and I fall asleep on pebbles and moss
feathers and hay
and the water carrying us all
soldier boy bird
I don’t know where away.