Monday 29 August 2016

CURLEWS

If I fail, say, and work on a supermarket checkout
I can’t think I’d be less happy
Or live with less meaning
Than my prized career, my treasured vocation,
And the proof is in markets and also in curlews.
Markets, like the one in St Hippolyte
Where the cheese man is flirting
And flattering, and laughing,
And ladies take compliments they get nowhere else.
There’s love in those sales
And ladies leave glowing.
And I wake, feeling lucky, to hear calls of the curlews
Which people call liquid
And most beautiful of birds
(And to a scared boy in cities where curlews weren’t singing,
A wide, unexpected chorus of peace).
But I wonder if it’s really deliberate, this beauty,
As practised an art, as anything can be,
Where, with noble intention,
The act doth become so.
Like loving, for a few moments,
Anyone through the checkout,
Which might be their portion of love for today
And you gave it. What a thing to say of your life!
Wherever I was, I gave love to the moment.
Makes me think of the curlews and the nature of their calling
And I wonder if their calling isn’t their calling?