(Walking to Birdworld, from Bentley station, through the Alice Holt forest)
No-one at Bentley, no station master or guard
to wave us on. We scrambled round fences until
signs emerged to follow dusty paths with their
horse-shoe crescents fired in baked mud like temporal fossils.
The gorse seethed with life; crickets’ shrill concerto.
Ears pressed against the pungent air of borders
for a rumour of macaws. I’d heard about their
free flight in the forest, the keepers aware
they would always return.
Eyes strained to either side, the dense weave of trees
ever alert to a little flit of blue, a streak of candescence
the scarlet and gold , over an endless floor of needles
and dank coniferous breath.
