essex naturalist

A title with two meanings. The one, indicates my return to posting on these pages after months of failing to do so. The other the keenly waited arrival of the swifts (Apus apus) above our house. Not that I am placing them both on the same level in terms of significance. The reappearance of those most aerial of birds is as momentous from each year to the next. My efforts on this blog are mere folly by comparison, but a folly that is hopefully enjoyed my some.

Of the birds, I once tried to capture them in verse.

Swifts Again
Swift sears the faultless blue
Between fair-weather clouds.  
Leaves me looking for vapour trails,
But find no such platitudes
Towards our own endeavours.
Only the purity of wing
And a healthy disregard
For the drudgery of the soil.

Swift is a dream-bird.
Shadows cutting bird shapes
Into the waking memory;
Eyes opening to unworldly sounds
And empty cirrus-brushed sky.
And then from the portal of the sun
Materialises higher and circling madly
On screaming spirals

Barely descending to earth.