Bohemian Waxwing
'80s drunks struggling
to stay afloat in a rowan
berry sea. The Pokémon
Pidgeot inspired
by their steely-eyed
look, surely? Its trill call,
sharp and descending
as a toy laser gun, enough
to keep the haters at bay,
trap them in a magic ball.
Look how the peach bellini sunset
aims to impress the bird;
a rivalry to last generations.
Condensation
Daily floods on my windowsill.
Sometimes, the cold etches
a Richter scale of mountains
on the bedroom windows.
Other times: banshee tears,
Jack Frost's melting fingers.
I swear I see a child making
faces on the glass, leave
behind pigeon feathers
bent into boats.
TV aerials ponder their existence
Pinned on roofs like Victorian insects,
their wireframe dragonfly bodies
hard to ignore. Morse code bones
absorb whatever the sky empties
from its pockets: glass eye hailstones,
rain colder than winter, the poltergeist
child of a sudden breeze. Stuck
like this for years, they while away
the time talking to seagulls
complaining about the weather,
play musical statues (they always win)
and theorise about their place
in the universe: Were they insects once?
Did they helicopter waltz over ponds?
Were they a snake in another Eden?
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can
be recently found in Wild Greens, Discretionary Love and Stone Poetry Journal.
Future poems will be appearing in Dreich, Uppagus and BlueHouse Journal.