twisted branches

twisted branches
the blackbird retreats
into his song

Having faffed around for the best part of an hour, trying fonts of various colours (including a stunning marigold to match the blackbird’s beak) I finally decided that the photo was good enough and should stand alone. After all, I’d already stalked this blackbird around the garden for quite a while in order to get as close as I could, and time never seems to be on my side!
The final version of the haiku came a few days after the photograph, and after an email conversation with poet Sue Riley, whose advice and support I value greatly. If there’s one thing I’ve missed during lockdown it’s those face-to-face conversations we have about poems that occur outside workshop situations, conversations that might not even be about poetry but that feed into it all the same.
So, thanks Sue, for helping me come to some sort of conclusion on the poem (Sue’s Ginko prize-winning poem is to be featured in an anthology about climate change published by Valley Press in May).