Observe the pool of self-regard:
there you feature,
scrambling through barbed wire
beyond wishful thinking.
There you stalk the hedgerow,
in pauses, keeping
your shadow hidden
from mouths in a glass.
Far from out-of-focus faces
you might not know again -
blinking, staring,
lost without a label.
Sometime elbows rest on knees.
Shielded by lee of bluff,
you scan horizons
where eight eighths sky meets sea.
Testing the acuity
of binocular vision -
for windy hours on end.
Or looking down
in precipitate espionage,
on the whirling, diving mass:
driven by demands of nest,
parents cry their name
to close-packed, cliff-bound young.
Colonised.
Or neck craned, peering
into the canopy for clues
to specificity.
One glimpse may be all your sight,
saving an ear to call or song,
or click of beak cleaned against bark.
Evidence.
On questions of identity,
record only what is seen for sure.
It helps to know which trait you seek -
the jizz of your quarry.
This bird’s-eye view, bespectacled,
has crow’s-feet at its canthi;
in such ruffled diagnostics,
more than sum of my reflection.
vii.2001
Some poems are begun with no notion of their direction, an eventual destination only emerging as the lines are ground out. Others may arrive complete with their own map. It’s then the poet’s task to convey that topography through the shape & argument of their lines. How well they succeed in taking the reader with them depends on the clarity of directions given.
ReplyDeleteThis poem derives from one of those (for me) all-too-rare occasions when the finished whole can be visualised right from the off. I’d no advance notes for its construction, as the core idea turned up unheralded.
The author is found observing himself - both in the here & now of a shaving mirror, and in his mind’s eye, pursuing memories of a youthful hobby. I tried to thread this ambiguity into the opening & closing quatrains. Hence, ‘out-of-focus faces’, ‘mouths in a glass’ (a steal from King Lear: “there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass” !), ‘bespectacled crow’s-feet’, and ‘ruffled diagnostics’ (feathers or hair?). And who is ‘lost without a label’? That’s for the reader to judge.
In the middle three stanzas I wanted to convey the intensity of this passion for birdwatching, which demands the discomforts of a craned neck and exposure to the elements. Some obscure words & expressions may need explanation, which I acknowledge to be a weakness. On the other hand, they impart authenticity & accuracy - sometimes poetry, like life, puts one in a no-win situation! For what it’s worth:
‘Canthi’ is the plural of ‘canthus’, either of the angles formed where the upper and lower eyelids meet.
‘Eight eighths sky’ is a technical expression, from meteorology, for total cloud cover. Here used to get across the sense of enclosure, and complete absorption, felt during an extended sea-watch in such conditions.
‘Parents cry their name’ has its origin in the particular species this stanza recalls. The Kittiwake, Britain’s smallest oceanic gull, derives its name onomatopoetically (try saying that after a few jars!) from its harsh, guttural (& sometimes deafening) cry.
‘Jizz’ is ornithological slang/jargon for the characteristic demeanour of a bird - and such a snappy word, I had to use it.