Birds in a Tree: An Elegy*

Before they took wing
the legend was there.

They sat together (which
seemed like necking to some)
on this branch for a spring.
It was an old tree,

an oak, sans intention,
and free.

Come September, the air
goes nipping through the woods
instinct to the root,
keening.

Of a feather,
they chirped a while

and fell silent.
Up in the blue turning to look

at this vanishing sight,
the sunset gold of leaf-fall,

a tree
that is wood to a fault
yet live from its own convention.

*Revised by Alamgir Hashmi from an earlier draft manuscript by the author, housed in the archives of the Dickens conservatory, Gad’s Hill Place (U.K.).