One Winter's Morn

Yet another poem about robins. I've written a good number, long and short, since I returned to poetry in 2012. They are scattered here and there on my blog.

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Lying in bed one winter’s morn
   A robin sang outside,
Hungry, bedraggled, frozen-shorn,
   He shrilled and then he sighed.
The dawn was dank, the air fog-thick,
   Undaunted, still he called,
Seeking a mate brown-eyed and spick
   And in her redbreast shawled.

For ice upon the trees would melt,

   The winter’s starvings ease,
And come the soak of April’s pelt
   And flustered dodge of bees,
He’d want a brood of bawling beaks
   Nest-huddled, stuffed with grubs,
Who’d fledge in summer’s warming weeks
   To hunt among the shrubs.

But breeding done, incautiously

   Prodding within the weeds,
A cat will leap implacably
   And blood his breast in beads.
Next winter in a snow-pale dawn
   His ill-fed son will sing;
A mate will perk, I’ll stretch a yawn,
   And death will hunch to spring.

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© January 2015