Birdsongs

On Sunday afternoons I took my father’s hand,

we walked the river Wandle’s bank,

observed anglers on their silent watch,

reeled in a different catch.

With ears for nets landed songs of birds,

each lively as a fish jumping

from it’s captor’s grasp. We let each quarry

dance away, it’s tune having danced into us.

When the stomachs fed by our ears were full

we turned for home, where birdsongs leapt,

my mother’s fingers adept at coaxing them

from a recorder’s wooden throat.

In the warbling thicket of our dining room

we took out the RSPB Handbook of British Birds,

matched our catch of tunes to their singers,

by comparing notes on colour, shape and

silhouettes of wings captured in flight.

Till the stomachs fed by our ears were settled,

and our stomachs that craved food took command.

As mother’s birdsongs from the living room subsided,

her kitchen nest oozed roasted savours in gravied hues.