Wings and Light

Along the beach,
birds are returning from the Arctic;
waders stop off to picnic
in a brightly moonlit stretch of sandy slime:
oystercatchers,
sandpipers,
curlews
and snipe.

Excited piping and haunting mournful cries
follow us home where we are greeted by
a kaleidoscope of moths congregating
around the halo of the porch light:
crumpled leaves of angle shades,
colourful hawks,
burnished brass,
tiger moths
and ghostly swallow-tails.

We float into sleep, dreaming
of easy light and skies full of wings.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Images by Nigel Blake and Tom Marshall found on rspb.com

My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Get Listed

Michael says it’s nearly high noon of summer in the northern hemisphere but what they won’t say anymore, or ask, is what happened to birdsong? He wonders whether it’s only in concrete southern California or wherever we are, but there are more than crow squawks and gull cries and the occasional dove coo at dusk. So for this edition of get listed, he wants us to see if we can bring the sounds of summer to the page – something missing, or maybe something just waiting to get noticed again. And we should use at least three of the following words or reasonable variants:

wheat, bird, easy, fling, pass, sweat, corn, float, ice cream (that’s considered one), bright, cricket, dusk

16 thoughts on “Wings and Light”

    1. They’re already here o. Our coast, all those wonderful wading birds. Moths seem to be increasing I. Number and type. Maybe high summer has come early this year.

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