Garrulus Glandarius by Steve Rudd

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.