Alliteration Contest Poems: Spring song, Grant Shimmin

Grant Shimmin is a New Zealand poet born in South Africa. An editor for Does it Have Pockets?, he has work in journals globally including Roi Faineant Press, Bull, The Hooghly Review,  The Hemlock Journal, Blue Bottle Journal and Cool Beans Lit. This poem was originally published in KUDU.

Spring song

There’s a bird whistling a tribute to the reddening sky
I think it’s a warbler
Grey
According to the bird books
which don’t list the colours of its song 
or that it rises above the criss-crossing, chattering chorus
of the avian commoners-by-comparison 
It’s the song of fast-coming Spring
putting on a preview
before Winter has a final wet whirl
Of grades of gorgeous green
grasping gratefully at hillsides
where gorse bursts buttery from its buds
Of pink and ivory blossoms 
Of crisp mornings of blue
and lightening hues of gold
Grey royalty, this warbler
Musical monarch of the verdant valley
Would that it had the power
to whistle away the coming wildness


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