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hedgehog

THE SURPRISER

Flying to Athens and intensive care,

the injured Cretan motor cyclist died

some time in the night over Melos.

Shrieking her grief, his mother ran in the aisle.

A stewardess tried to calm, restrain her.

The boy’s bare, pale feet were protruding

from an orange blanket. The makeshift cortège

bore us faster than he had ever dreamed.

 

In couch grass, on Chester’s Meadows, a hedgehog

was embarrassed by death the surpriser.

A trickle of blood betrayed it – and

indifference to strollers and to crows.

BESTIARY

Ram, The Aberdeen Bestiary
Ram, The Aberdeen Bestiary

 

                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                               i

 

A swan, standing, preening itself obliviously

in the nearside lane of the overpass,

diverts the chance commuters into

storytellers for the day.

 

                               ii

 

One morning, perched on a bird table, a kestrel

was tearing a head.

A pheasant, late in the afternoon, whirred from the terrace

and over the privet.

Earthbound, a hedgehog tripped the security light and waited.

 

                              iii

 

In one late September week, I saw three foxes:

one crossing the car park at Sainbury’s in sunset,

its lean head scanning;

another approaching the motorway across meadowland, loping

securely in wilderness;

the third, dead, and laid, like any dog or cat,

on the trimmed verge.