In winter,
The interlaced, Interlocking, leafless,
Limbs and branches and twigs
Of two plum trees
Look to me
Like the nerve connections
In a vast wet wooden brain,
As I sit and stare air up at them,
In a thin cold December rain.
After I have loaded
The feeders with seeds and suet,
Many small birds begin to fly in.
Landing in in the treetops
Then dropping, hopping and
Fluttering down
Coal tits, blue tits, great tits
Dunnocks, robins and goldfinches
Make indirect, differing routes
From perch to perch
Nearer and nearer to the food.
Bobbing and turning their heads,
At every stage along the way.
Checking all around for predators:
Because there must be a catch.
As even little birds know
That free lunches are fictitious.
So, they work their ways,
Round and down the trees
Until they're placed
To make rapid dashes in,
Quickly pick and grab,
Then immediately escape
To eat elsewhere
The price that they pay for suet and seeds
Is that I watch them
And compare them
With the starting sparks of ideas
Or initial perceptions
That somehow stick and then begin
Hopping and moving in impulses,
And by intuition,
From neuron to neuron,
Building metaphors,
Shaping ideas,
And then, maybe making
Something like
This poem.
