NEXT YEAR

Wild bees have occupied the swifts’ nesting box

sparrows colonised last spring and summer.

The sun casts fleeting, waltzing shadows

on the white walls of the house – males and queens

at their love-making. A carrion crow

with a chunk of bread in its machined beak

alights on the rim of the bird bath

as if from some dark play. It dunks the bread.

Over in the west the sky is ivory

through a break in the clouds. A box, and a bath,

concrete and wood, and the sun – how the future

is made: next year swifts maybe, and the wild bees,

the carrion crow, us.