Poem for a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker I saw.

 Speed Poem for a female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

With a nod to P/O John Gillespie McGee, 1922-41, who described a blue sky far better than I ever could, whose words are borrowed with credit and gratitude.

I gaze into the branches

Of Alders and twisted hornbeams

On a still and sun-drenched winter's day

A glimpse, at first

A nodding back, snow dappled

Pure brilliant, white emulsion flecked

High among the long denuded branches

You reveal yourself, small, elegant

Buff stained white crowned

Picked out against the sky

McGee's long delirious burning

Blue, still, you're winter at its gentlest

Stippled, bright black, ever nodding, busy in the branches

On the move, constant, keeping out the cold,

Up there, mild denizen of the treetops

Then dropping down, light as a butterfly

Parachuting on broad stippled wings

As beautiful as laughter

And out of sight, onto the next grub, the next meal, the next leafless coppice stand

Unreal, enthralled, my neck bent hard toward the sky

I look with longing

To the place where you used to be