April brings with it the challenge of National Poetry Writing Month. One poem per day for the next 30 days. What better way to kick start my next 100 days of blogging if you take up this challenge. So follow along as for the next 30 days , I’ll be sharing a poem I create, sometimes in response to the prompts posted over here, sometimes from other inspirations. But I’ll be hopefully following the theme of Nature for this body of work.

Day 1 – In these troubling times, our way of being comes into sharp focus

Taking out the rubbish

I’m met by a bully of a bird

on our backyard wall.

He doesn’t take his leave.

Indolent, he waiters along the bricks

beady eyeing me.

Mum used to say things

must be rough at sea

for seagulls to be so far inland.

Today, I don’t think this is the case.

I think people are no longer at sea

forcing these scavengers

reliant on the discarded chip

or bit of fish to become urban

into backyards where citizens

take their recommended

or is it permitted

daily shot of sun while in lockdown.

This seagull surveys the scene.

One foot, two foot, two foot, one.

Head jerking alert, yellow sickle beak,

hooking the air with it’s call.

Grey wings once settled now stretched

wide with an inkling to take flight

but it decides to stay, close.

Two foot, one foot, one foot two.

A shared landscape it’s always been.

Perhaps, now, more obvious

how we all have to adapt

to a new way of being

which might have us all eating grass yet.