It’s a quiet Saturday morning. And, looking from
This third-floor window, my first sight of things alive
Shows me five/six goldfinches arriving, squadron-like
In darts of lucid colour in our grown-together trees.
Heads of fire-engine red, like they've
pecked through the tops of paint pots,
Their call more gossipy than such an
elegant appearance might suggest.
Maybe my attention’s been captured by
things of feather, flight and bone.
Or maybe there's some other realm, just behind what's visible
So over-full with beauty that
The balance of the whole shebang would be upset
If strikingly beautiful creatures did not erupt into being,
And furnish earth’s undersea, or hop and flit in my garden.

So in my garden, they hop and flit.
And suddenly I see this group scatter like a firework,
Firing finches outwards at speed from a centre-point.
As suddenly again, they're back where they started
Studying each other and exploring their leafless paths.
Their vividness, and silent, surprising motion,
Their lax adherence to the laws of physics (as I perceive them)
All remind me of the cloud of dust from Redding
A few years back.

Remember?

where the silvery specks would swoop
And swirl above our heads in the low-lit building.
One moment stately, one moment playful,
They would swell, and sometimes fall on us.
Sometimes rise to the ceiling. Then would pass out of sight,
Would grab our collective breath again by bursting
Like a firework. As if some pyrotechnic artist,
just behind everything, had such an excess of colours
on their fiery palette
That the balance of this whole shebang would be upset
If strikingly beautiful things did not erupt into being,
And furnish our field of vision.