Writing on the Wall

High in The Barns eave’s
from a gnats perspective
blue Fairy, gleams and flashes
fish-like, as it swims among open beams.

Sees anxious faces stare up
listen to the whirr of wings,
watch delicate manoeuvres.
It views us ‘round the

decorated tree, a circle
from above not tall, and spread
below explosions of paper fragments
tinsel-trail to table debris,
and testing detective edges,
a Cluedo game progresses in the hall.

We sit, guide a remote controlled descent,
before our walk. Floor rushes up
meets helicopter, Silverlit,
from Amazon.net, her
desert-storm-dust-sparkle blows
in operation smile,
eat, play, relax,
a stroll between the courses.

The chat; roasties first,
lingering on taste buds,
and the sudden burst of laughter,
when the Moet cork fires up thirty feet,

hits the roof and targets back to bottle,
‘that was a neat,’ to toast the execution
of a Seasonal mission gone to plan,
but for some it’s another Christmas in Afghanistan.

B.Fry 26th Dec 2007

Sharp breath blows out another year,
with loops and tangles it blanket-stitches hay
and thistle down in sparse hedges.

Summer greens drain back to red earth,
leave grasses, dry and wild, to sing out
in sunlit haloes along the forest edge.

Winds spin and scatter leaves, they ginger up our roads,
busy as commuters clear platforms
or gather in café corners.

High tides flatten, gales brush out a season’s debris;
the tired year takes to its heart a summer lost,
poor harvests, flood and storm.

On glowing window glass the water streaks,
dark nights draw early lights; eyes close on forest, field,
and turn instead to kinder warmth of hearth and home. 

At three pm.
chattering bird babble
shakes us from the house,
a flying orchestra,
one thousand morphing birds
swirl and settle in the Ash.
 
A dressing of Starlings
trinket up bare boughs;
notes on a score,
cut out sihouettes
feathers flat and pointing south.
 
This tree-break interval
this high-way rest
for winging minstrels,
one body in their flight
their score and song.
 
A silent siren call,
the branches shift
and shadows lift in shoals,
mid verse, move on.