NaPoWriMo April 2014

My poem today is a draft that may become part of a collection of poems about the few years I spent in South East Asia in the 1980's. The experience, like any life change, has left memories both pleasantly nostalgic and sad. This poem deals with an imaginary but common situation.

Saturday 
April 26th

Instinct

A sad mad ghost in the rattling palms.
Daylight springs to attention
in the interstices of the veranda screen.
Geckos continue competing round dim lamps.
At the rattan desk a man remembers
slow blue dawns, flash–mobs
in an English beech hedge.
Did despair activate the falling pitch
of the fever bird’s jarring dirge?
Claims on territory? Need for a mate?
Birds obey a natural urge to sing.
It’s only human to wonder why.

© Janice Windle