Mister Popinjay, up on his branch
Considers all the angles
Before committing;
Head on one side,
Matching the slant of light through branches
Jaunty but wary
Like a young lad, out upon the town,
Entering an unfamiliar bar.
Mister Popinjay
Brought me the summer
- a gift for which I’m grateful -
By decking his house with green
And wearing gaudy feathers.
Fluttering down from somewhere near at hand
He lets me pay him peanuts for his trouble.
Mister Popinjay
Is nothing special
In the greater scheme of things –
He gets a bad press, like cuckoos and magpies
And yet his gaudy feathers’re numbered
Like the hairs on my head
As are those of his colourful siblings
- Or so I’m told.
Mister Popinjay,
Millions of years
Turned you from dinosaur to bird
And brought you to my feeding-table
This Sunday teatime, to what purpose
God alone knows;
Now the moment’s gone again –
You’ve flown far from me, like a lover –
- “they flee from me,
that sometime did me seek”
- But you have seared my mind with coloured feathers and
Infected me with your sheeny jauntiness, now my head too
Is held sideways, looking for the sunlight, jaunty but wary,
Even if you never return, though I hope you will, often,
That, at least, I have to thank you for.
