The Girton Poetry Group

Not Averse

Urban bird watching
On the Huntingdon Road.

They found him, petrified,

Frozen in flight on tarmac soar

No scar or battle wound,

Just resting, feet cresting

The concrete wave.

Days stretch out, like a wingspan

And feathers form the funeral parade.

A sparrow snatched from flight

With wheeling thump.

Icarus, spread-eagled in the cycling lane.

With borrowed wings a hedgehog

Sprawls upon the pavement,

Bristles forced to comic angles.

A pigeon’s slow, ungainly steps

To cross the road (no joke in that)

Catch at only half way there.

Feathers blacken and unpeel

With the mourning of the wheels.