I’m fostering an orphaned owlet like a parent on the edge of reason
Poet and artist Frieda Hughes watches intently as a mother blackbird feeds her chicks: ‘All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise’
BACKYARD BIRD WATCH
Mother blackbird, as brown as soil,
Yellow beak like delicate tweezers,
Stands at the bowl of grain, tossing seeds
Into the open gullets of her full-sized chicks.
She feeds their demands with the panicky speed
Of a parent on the edge of reason, as if
Shovelling coal into the belly of a steam engine.
Sparrow fledgelings protest their turn,
Fat woodpigeons pace the yard, impatiently waiting,
And two collared dove chicks, still flightless, feather up
In their nest among the branches and leaves of the metal tree.
Their soft little faces and surprised eyes peer down
At the courtyard into which they will soon tumble,
Before the wind makes sense of their wings
And draws them into the skies like children’s kites.
I am feeding an orphaned owlet on his way back to the wild,
When suddenly, he leaps at me from the kitchen table,
Scrabbles inside my shirt and lodges himself firmly
Beneath my right armpit as I write this.