nostos

Moving in November meant we missed

the winter birds, the wigeon who seem scared

of loneliness especially. You’d see them

on the mud flats lose a sight line and at once

as one the little plaintive squeals like miniature pigs

came wheedling through the grey dusk air

until they floated down to where the others were

and you could hear the solitary curlews clear again.

Of course these days I can regain all this

here in the downs by calling up their shadows

on my phone. It’s here I learn this longed for bird’s

melancholic proper name: Anas Penelope.

She, rooted to a radius as these ducks to a migratory

route, did recover her other half in the end. We,

my love, go on searching. It must be wonderful,

like these heroic little fowl, to home.