Sparrow

sixth post, an oddity and a poem about a sparrow.

A few years ago I entered my first poetry competition.You had to enter by snail mail and its prize was to win 12 galleons - who wouldn't want to try to win that?! it was a small publication called The Frogmore Papers based in Sussex.  I wrote a very short small poem and I didn't think much of my chances and I didn't win but I did come second! I was utterly stunned this was my almost winning poem!

I was on holiday in Croatia when I was notified, it was the height of summer and when we returned to our house the grass was completely dried out and thirsting. My prize acknowledgement had arrived I opened my tiny letter box and in it was a desiccated sparrow glued to an envelope. The envelope had been torn in the birds fright and desperation to get out revealing only this quotation on the back of the book that I had won:

Needless to say it was one of the oddest things! I wrote to Jeremy Page to tell him about the weird occurrence and he was equally baffled! the book was one of his titled “The Cost of all Desire”. I keep wondering why did that bird fly into my letter box, what was it looking for? was it trying to escape from a predator or searching for a place to roost? I try not to think about its final hours unable to get out from a tiny space heating up in the sun. I try to honour its dying, its bizarre underlining of the Helen Dunmore quote - the message its dying seemed to have for me, unhappy in my hilltop house in the forest all alone - we moved away not long after.

This obviously eventually translated itself into a poem that I wrote during lockdown following another sparrow flying into my bedroom in a different house in a different forest.

I would love to hear any odd and weird experiences you have had!

Sparrow

In my old life a sparrow died in my letterbox 

flew in and was trapped, her body desiccated in summer’s heat 
and glued itself to a letter that said on the envelope: 

“It died, that was all. Birds die. How long do sparrows live anyway?”

That is a true story.

This morning a sparrow conjured herself into my bedroom, 
in my dream her wing beats were my heart 
as it fluttered to wakefulness, 
they were her skirts as she, frantically, fell from the window 
like Alice down the rabbit hole. 
Then they became wood splinters, 
spread like stiff fans, with her little body gasping for outside.

This sparrow fell into the pocket of a bag like small change. 
A pink and sparkly second-chance-at-life womb 
readied to find the sun again.

I midwifed her as she perched on the edge of her canvas precipice. 
From here she saw the sky, turned to me 
without her wild-to-human flinch 
then flew away.

How long do sparrows live anyway?

(With thanks to Helen Dunmore for the quote from Counting the Stars)