By Ted Logan
From my second floor hospital window
Looking out as darkness falls,
The surrounding car-parks and courtyard plots,
Hospital towers like canyon walls;
Note – the large blackbirds with erratic flight
From roof-top to roof-top, in the dying light.
Round and around the radio masts
The flap-happy roisterers sweep and swerve –
A genetically driven ritual
Every springtime to observe;
Exuberance and joi de vivre – or so the story goes
For rooks and ravens and ravenous crows.
At first I thought they were giant bats –
Webbed and ribbed like serrated umbrellas,
Swinging around the towers chasing moths
Then back to their caves and cellars.
But no! They were birds – ravens and crows –
A rookery of ravens, quite a chorus line of those!
Meanwhile the work in the ward goes on,
Doctors and nurses make their rounds,
Medications are deserved and served –
Hospital smells and hospital sounds.
Unobserved the birds find a resting space –
With tomorrow their springtime nesting place!
