Yellow Hammer

My watch said a quarter past ten.
Dust from the limestone road
had powdered my shoes like pollen.
A heat–haze danced
over the wayside grass.

In the hedge sat a singing bird.
I saw his throat vibrate
as the notes sprang out of the parted beak.
He was yellow as beaten gold
on the harebell blue of the sky.
Over and over,
cooler than water
jetted his one–line tune,
so perfect he needed no other.
Not sad a little pensive perhaps,
thinking of some lost Eden his bones
would not let him forget.

I listened and looked
til my eyes and my ears and the bird were as one.

Then, without warning,
he lifted his yellow wings
and was off.

My watch said twenty past ten.
If it had told me tomorrow,
or twenty years hence,
I would have believed it