Main Index

Poetry Home Page 

Poems

1 Magpies
2 Chernobyl
3 Return to Chernobyl
4 Absence
5 Circumlocution
6 Persephone
7 Erebus revisited
8 Alice's Cat
9 Sometimes I see a cloud
10 Lost Child
11 On the coach to Hay-on-Wye
12 Brecon Cathedral
13 Honeymoon
14 Waiting
15 How can I say I love you?
16 Eclipse of the Moon  
17 Big Issue
18 Resurrection

 Magpies

Magpies, Mafia of the woods,
garden's gangland bosses,
roost in trees near the house,
casing the joint. Comic, sinister,
tails awkwardly adroop,
they wait to swoop on loot.
Or, sleek in flash tuxedos,
swagger and strut, shooting cuffs
like Jimmy Cagney, George Raft;
bully-boys terrorising blue-tits.
Alerted, lurch to a perch,
squawking hoarse alarums.
In summer their hooligan young,
clumsy in flight, flounder
and flub from branch to branch,
raucous as football fans.
Their wary eyes watch for beer cans,
broken glass, the glint of steel.

Poems for private use only. © Anne Grimes. Email Graphics by Bruce Grimes