Chiff chaffs imagined , from ten thousand miles away

Clare says - Here's another poem about birds,  this one written in Melbourne , Australia, about an April day far away in England . Wherever I am in the world I like to remember the fresh  colours of an English April , and this poem, like Emily Dickinson's, reminds me that Nature keeps up her timeless routines with the changes of the seasons, indomitably beautiful. 

The chiffchaffs will be arriving,
measuring out April in half-mile flights
repeated from hedgerow to hedgerow.
Black legs, pale lemon breast, slim beaks
that open singing out their name
to anyone with ears to hear.
They would have passed the small blues
dancing on the Downs from vetch to vetch
as they drifted north.
Then up damp Midlands valleys
over the fat carp of the Nene
and hoof-printed shallows where the cattle drink.
How many flights, since time began?
Immemorial, fragile, indomitable
ticking off the centuries up there.
Ten thousand miles from me.
​
Chris Ringrose April17, 2020
http://www.cringrose.com/