Lapwings
They were everywhere. No. Just God or smoke
is that. They were the backdrop to the road,
My parents’ home, the heavy winter fields
from which they flashed and kindled and uprode
the air in dozens. I ignored them all.
‘What are they?’ ‘Oh – peewits – ‘ Then a hare flowed,
bounded the furrows. Marriage. Child. I roamed
round other farms. I only knew them gone
when, out of a sad winter, one returned.
I heard the high mocked cry ‘Pee – wit , ‘ so long
cut dead. I watched it buckle from vast air
to lure hawks from its chicks. That time had gone.
Gravely, the parents bobbed their strip of stubble.
How had I let this green and purple pass?
Fringed, plumed heads (full name, the crested plover)
fluttered. So crowned cranes stalk Kenyan grass.
Then their one child, their anxious care, came running,
squeaked along each furrow, dauntless, daft.
Did I once know the story of their lives,
do they migrate from Spain? or coasts’ cold run?
And I forgot their massive arcs of wing.
When their raw cries swept over, my head spun
With all the brilliance of their black and white
As though you cracked the dark and found the sun.
Alison Brackenbury
(Published in Poetry London)
Alison Brackenbury was born in Lincolnshire in 1953 but now lives in Gloucestershire. Her most recent collection is ‘Singing in the Dark’. Carcanet, 2008. ‘A quiet lyricism and delight’. The Guardian. New poems can be read at her website. She also has a Facebook group, Poems from Alison, which sends out a free new poem every two months, and can be found on the dreaded Twitter, with poetry links and the odd bumblebee, as ABRACKENBURY.
Abegail Morley 