Birds Knit My Ribs Together E-Book

Phil Barnett

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 20

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

what if / I actually – am – a bird / my cupped hands / opening to release me... Phil Barnett's relationship with birds is so close that his poetry blurs the distinctions between himself and the birds - a kind of ornimorphology where rather than giving the birds human characteristics, the reverse happens, and he imagines himself as a bird. Phil Barnett is a photographer, writer, musician, artist and naturalist, who has a passion for the birds that kept him company through a long hard illness. His photography and poetry have quite a following on social media, which is where we found him, on The Daily Haiku. His skill as a photographer leads to an acute visual sensibility, and his slow recovery moves from a tick sheet his mother had to fill in for him, to extraordinary poetry - full of wit and wonder and spectacular language.

Leseprobe

Contents

The Tick Sheet

Introduction

The Pond

Dream Thrush

Wounds

Two White Horses

Curse

To Know What it’s Like

Box of Letting Go

Jackdaws to Roost

Bird watching

We Give What We Can

Just Sitting

Under Wings

Trepanning

Unchorused

A Crack Must Have Opened

Plugged by a Bird

Unsprung

Butcherbird

Terrible Curve

Nor

Woodcock Rising

Floating Cork of Me

Molten Roe

So Close

Amber Under

The News

Spans Two Hills

Its Own Angle

The Nature Dog

Coastal Footpath

Used To Be

Flux

Set the Air

Stones

Open

A Willow’s Words

When I was Water

Facts

Wildlife

Birds

I Shall Know Less

Introduction

Wren, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Goldcrest

At the start of each month I say the names of birds.

Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Nuthatch, Tree Creeper

My mother writes them down

Blackbird, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Blackcap

For me to tick each day I see the bird.

Robin, Dunnock, Pied Wagtail, House Sparrow

I can’t write them myself, my brain won’t work.

Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Bullfinch

I can’t move, I watch birds.

Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Feral Pigeon, Sparrow Hawk

At the start of each month I recite the scope of my world, the extent of my landmass, my ancient map.

Lesser Black Backed Gull, Herring Gull, Black Headed Gull, Heron

At the start of each month I say the names of birds.

Jay, Magpie, Jackdaw, Crow.

The Pond

by the pond in always falling daylight

misted moon-smitten blue

all the animals came and went

and all the ghosts

glancing through curves

through bent branches of night-heavy alder

things that were neither

everything went to that watering place

there were false alarms, many of them

a flock of birds on the in breath

a lost decade on the out

dipping down to sip

the last end-of-summer swallow

just skimming the surface

of a stillborn dawn

then at last a song thrush sang

it’s day, it’s day

and because this time I sang along

   it was day

Dream Thrush

back then there were only wild words

mostly wordless, free of meaning

grounded air, a ripple’s seeing-through-to

an omen-thrush, a new dawn-thrush

winter’s tale breast, yarn of flank

a story-thrush, an idea of feathers

more of them with each telling

till I was a full-thrush

a song-thrush now,

bird shape of the farthest branches

spoke them once, sang them twice

these words

I gave his grandson to sing