By our side gate the old laburnum – whose wood,
in time, may make a chanter or a flute –
is in bloom. I look up through its branches.
There is a little azure and smidgens
of green – and droplets, ringlets, links, chains
of cascading yellow, a torrent of gold.
***
Our Edwardian neighbourhood fills
with the machined roar of twin turbofans.
An Airbus Beluga – more Arctic whale
than Caspian sturgeon – with cargoes
of worked metal from Toulouse, banks low
over the churchyard’s antique horse chestnuts.
***
A heron, crossing from one river
to another, beats above our chimney pots,
and three swifts, harbingers, curve through the blue.
A blackbird, perched on the laburnum’s
aureate halcyon canopy,
imbues the street with song.
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By David Selzer