12-Hour Carol Contest: Let Us Praise the Autumn Birds, Ben Morgan

Ben Morgan is a writer based in London, UK. His sequence Medea in Corinth: Poems, Prayers, Letters, and a Curse, is published by Poetry Salzburg. It retells the myth through poems, spells and songs. He has also published poems at The High Window, Oxford Poetry, Alchemy Spoon, One Hand Clapping, Stand and elsewhere. 


Let Us Praise the Autumn Birds

 

Praise

The boring autumn birds

Of Regent's Park.

Their beaks like spoons

Scoop honey light

From sepia lawns at dawn.

Their quiet cannot be drowned out

By Baker Street. Their wings

- fieldfare, mistle thrush, sparrow, tern -

Never - barely - glow nor burn,

Would win no medals

From Paris, but praise,

Now, their glamorous subtlety,

Whose bashful glories

Nest like jealousy

By Chester Terrace.

The same intensities

Riot in their breasts

As in the eagle's,

So commend their wise restraint,

To leave those glassy lakes

A bloodless grey.

Winged September peonies!

Bob-headed ambassadors

Of fantasy -

That all there is from Mary-

lebone to Albany

Is mildness.

Praise them!

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