sparrows

 In a strange railway station

I await a strange train

Five hundred miles from home.

Then I hear bird calls

That I have heard before.

One note from house sparrows

Echoing down

From iron rafters above.

The song that once

I heard every day,

A sound that I had filed away,

In a deep dark archive

In my skull.

Now it fires some neuron or other,

And I see a suburban street,

With sparrows nesting in every gutter

Of every house.

I remember sweeping up the nestlings,

That fell straight from the egg

To death on a pavement below

Never having flown.

I’ve sipped tea,

In cafes in London parks

Where the ground was hidden by

A mass of sparrows,

Hopping between shoes

To dine on dropped crumbs.

These birds were always there,

Everyday everywhere,

Until one day they weren’t.

The air was empty

No more one note song,

And I never knew that they had gone,

I was always too busy to notice.

But now sparrows are back again,

Long may they remain,

Singing a simple song,

Surviving in a city.