Nuthatch

Nuthatch

Sleek as a stealth bomber
tiny space shuttle
clad in slate
breast still cooling
from re-entry

found your home now
amongst the shadows
channelling your inner serpent
creeping over the old skin
of the trees
scenting sunlight further up

but no desire
to return to the empyrean
feeding on the crumbs
in the creases
of the Sun’s discarded
sweet wrappers

I realised that the Nuthatch didn’t have a poem of its own within my debut bird-themed collection ‘Shoals of Starlings’. This is strange as the nuthatch has for a long time been one of my favourite birds, so last weekend this poem finally came to me.
I am thinking of printing this poem on a postcard with the image on the other side. I like the idea of this becoming the bookmark for the book. It would go some way to rectifying the exclusion of this wonderful bird from my collection.