Writing, photography and more by Daniel Greenwood
We won’t know
when the cuckoo goes,
we’ll never know it’s gone,
we won’t know
when the cuckoo goes,
we’ve never heard its song.
We won’t know
when the cuckoo goes,
we’ll never know it’s gone,
we won’t know
when the cuckoo goes,
they say it won’t be long.
We won’t know
when the cuckoo goes,
we’ll say that nothing’s wrong,
until the day
that the cuckoo goes,
we’ll sing the cuckoo’s song.
And if the cuckoo goes,
then the cuckoo’s gone.
In the street an ice cream
van sings a glistening tune,
parked on the kerb,
no children come outside.
It rolls away,
and the music sparkles
in the May sky,
and houses climbing on the hill.
The laburnum flowers fade,
seed pods hanging dry
like poisonous earrings.
I rest my head
on the tabby’s tum,
and his pulse presses
to my temple.
A magpie is huffing
in the hawthorn,
and my father –
protector of the songbird –
sends it to the cobalt,
with a clap.
The plough rests
like a hook on a glass
ceiling, as men sit,
boozily talking,
about beauty, souls
and space.
Tawny owls, ke-wick,
hooting from maple
to sleeping copper beech.
Satellites race the orbit
of the earth’s night.
‘Souls are queuing up,’
he says, and I try
not to laugh.
The moon is up,
and the stars are
my glinting headdress.
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.
© Daniel James Greenwood 2011
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.
© Daniel James Greenwood 2011
A fallen beech,
like the limb
of a prostrate,
fallen beast.
© Daniel James Greenwood 2011
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.
© Daniel James Greenwood 2011
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.
© Daniel James Greenwood 2011
If I am not in love
I can be found,
tearing pages from children’s colouring books,
letting them into the dock.
If I am not in love
I can be found,
mugging schoolboys
for their headphones.
If I am not in love
I can be found,
sinking rowboats
in Regent’s Park.
If I am not in love
I can be heard,
speeding past your house
blaring funky house.
If I am not in love
I can be found,
burning plastic figurines
in midday alleyways.
If I am not in love
I have been known
to throw stones, at the windows
of the Sefton Palm House.
If I am not in love
I can be found,
pouring thick black oil
into my sleeping neighbour’s pond.
If I am not in love
I can be found,
belching in the cosmetics aisle
of a monolithic supermarket.
If I am not in love
I can be seen,
picking my nose and sat at this desk
by my bedroom window.
© Daniel James Greenwood, 2010
Unlocking Landscapes 