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ROGER
ELKIN
Acting
Blackbird
Second Prize Winner, SLQ
Poetry Competition (April 2010)
Dressed in jet like the
villain
of a minor Jacobean tragedy
is nervy-bird, up-tight.
Sleek wheeler-dealer, steel-eyed
with slashings of smile,
lets no-one up-stage him:
muscles bullying in from the wings
ready for a fight.
Or trounces, automaton,
across patio and lawn choreograph
his birdbath-splashing-routine,
then diagonals away
to skulk among shadows,
swaggering beneath rhododendron
and beech-hedging,
his dagger of beak unsheathed.
Hopes he'll get away with his asides
where he runs through leather-jackets
and makes the fat worm squirm.
Soliloquy is his forte:
adorns the morning chorus
with mellow flutings
till ratcheting the action to panic level
with his chattering patter
accusing all the world
of being on the edge of danger.
Dies off-stage,
unsung, unmourned.
© Roger
Elkin 2010
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