Unlocking Landscapes

My Cat is a Wild Cat

The footballer’s field is
a mown meadow,
the actress
wears a dragonfly
broach on her breast.

My cat is a wild
cat, the ancestor
of the beast
that roamed, below
the miles and miles
of Scot’s pine.

The chicken on
the plate, the flesh
of a dinosaur’s
distant daughter.

Your cricket
bat is willow,
and your mobile forged
from a mine in the Congo.

Archimides was killed
by a lammergeier,
and the Germans use an eagle
as an emblem.

The night sky,
and calling
redwing crossing
the blue depths,
from black oak
to black oak.

I searched through the trees
in the Russian wood.
The bullish wren,
reciting from the brush.

The towers loomed
in the pale morning
air, spring waking
slowly in the green lawns,

and the chaffinch
showing in the elder.
He was soon to sing.
A Chinese woman threw

a ball to her baby boy,
he motored
after the rainbow-coloured
thing. His grandmother

floated in their wake,
the gentle manoeuvres
of a knowing,
loving mother to more

than her first,
and foremost.

A fallen beech,
like the limb
of a prostrate,
fallen beast.

The dripping park:
black and sodden cotton,
the brink of dark,
exultant, the dripping park.

I am speaking Russian –
‘Meenya zavoot Danila!’
and you are overawed like a child.
You reply fluently so I stop.

You move beneath a pink umbrella,
and in the near night I miss you.
The rain meets your curls,
your white cotton.

The dripping park:
black trees and shivering ponds.
Cars are fizzing on the outside.

You step into a hidden pool,
taking a tissue from your bag
you wipe your ankle down,
your hair lurches over as you bend.

We are on the brink, the break of dark.
The lanterns lull.

We are leaving…
on cracked and caving paving.

I am like a starling,
I mimic people passing,
and craning from the roof,
I whistle a little tune.

We are just like starlings,
with iridescent markings,
we gather on the roof,
we play our little flutes.

I am but a starling,
I call to people passing,
and perched up on the weathervane,
I play my little flute.

We are all like starlings,
we sing to people passing,
our bodies made for dancing,
we sing our little tunes.