Speugs
You fall like clouds for you are many,
you rise like dustbowls offered to the wind.
Dawn fills with your eager chatty clatter,
bringing to the world your scores of weans.
They beg with open mouths and shimmering wingtips,
shadow their fathers to a source of seed.
And as the feeder swings the fever’s growing,
the hunger for the love and for your needs.
You show us how to nurture little children,
to celebrate their necessary greed.
Rosie Mapplebeck
July 2016, in appreciation of the house sparrows reaching maturity in the ivy on my house wall. You are one yet you are many.