BIRDBRAIN

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.