[Lyric] At the Edge of a Birchwood (Douglas Dunn)

Beneath my feet, bones of a little bird
Snap in a twig-flutter. A hundred wings
Adore its memory, and it is heard
In the archival choirs now where it sings.

Ewes nurse their lamb-flock on an upland field.
Late gambols in the last kick of the sun
As I scoop dirt on a hand's weight, briefly held,
A cradled cup of feathered, egg-shelled bone,

Turning the earth on it; and underground
Go song and what I feel, go common things
Into the cairn of a shoe-patted mound,
Goes half my life, go eyes, instinct and wings.

The moon rubs through the bluе pallor of high east
And childlessness has no numbеr in the May
Shadowed with birchlight on the county's crest.
This year her death-date fell on Mother's Day.