...... Whilst we are lingering at the start of May waiting for warm summer days, here is a poem I wrote in Croyde, North Devon.  The surfy sea, the dunes and the beautiful, bracing cliff walks - all ingrained in my memory.

It transports me back to family holidays and what happened in the tiny garden of our chalet one evening.......

Prey

Pale moth wings flicker on the lamp.

Outside the blackbirds chink danger –

their distress so great, I at last step

into the warm smother of dusk.

It is his legs I glimpse first,

gleaming yellow in the half-light.

My eye holds his of glinting jet;

feathers fringe a sickled beak.

I do not know who is most afraid,

yet it is me who backs away -

and the stand-off is broken

as he takes flight, wings whispering,

talons gripping the lifeless prey,

ashy feathers floating in his wake.


Sue Burley
Published in  "Reach Poetry ", May 2017