Day 659 – Greenfinch (Watts)

On Day 659 of the daily poems, our poet Anthony Watts buries a true treasure …

Greenfinch

The dead bird at your feet – 
there is nothing 
more silent, more still.

The sunlit meadow of its breast 
unfaded, yellow tail-lights blazing,
it lay on the concrete path below the window

that stopped it dead
in its flightpath through the conservatory:

discarded shuttlecock, appliquéd purse
containing the smashed contraption that an hour ago 
had sped it round the garden on hidden wires.

I consign it to the compost heap
like burying treasure.

Anthony Watts