I am

This windswept day, I am a grimy truck, Sisyphean,
carrying a burden of quarried rocks,
rough-hewn, heavy,
up the M14.

Just before dawn, I will return,
racheting gears downhill, my engine juddering into
the ears of dreaming children,
curled under duvets, murmuring in their sleep.

Today, I am the small bird
that thudded into the windowpane,
the bird whose red blood leaked out of its beak
as it lay gasping on the verandah tiles,
the bird I strangled, judging it too late for saving.

Now, I am the boy kicking his feet out from under
the swing at the gallery
who sees his shadow beneath him on the hard-bitten ground,
and says: ‘I am there, and here too’.

I buried the dead bird
in a hole I dug in the earth,
too close maybe
to the dark-leaved arrow of a new sapling.

My face crumpled like
a torn page
in the hand of a harsh poet.
My tears rained down.

Grief tugged at my throat,
like a baby at his mother’s nipple,
asking for her love.

20.10