in june

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I met miss blackbird in june,

her dun dress feathered across her sepia nest

and her bleak eyes set in ochre fixtures,

staring black through me, through the hollowed fronds

of the sambucus tree, as if

- through the mauvish movement of the foliage –

I had come, a pale poacher, for her eggs, her mottled cerulean

blues: the four of them so small, so new.

I met miss magpie in june,

the ultraviolence of her cyan wing,

inking skies magenta, and her striking

pied brilliance. floored me. she is

a rending machine, rending tendon from sinew

tending towards glistening bone, sending

herself, bleeding with the shining violet blood

of babes that aren’t her own, home.

I remember stilling in june,

dun miss blackbird might have begged me

to intervene, in her voiceless wail whilst

flitting, and assailing the murder-bird, as magpie

returned in sorties for each glowing violet chick

blind yet to this most silent world. I stared.

the bird – in lancing itself a turquoise dart across the sky

paring fading life between its eyes – stunned me inert.