When you told me about the guillemots
and kittiwakes, how their numbers
are falling, how you’ve watched them roost
on cliffs ever since you were a child,
you lifted your hand over your eyes
and cried.
I heard the attic room swell
with the ache and crack of calling birds,
wings in flight beating walls to dust,
your whole house falling into the Dene,
unlocking the sky around our hearts.
From: You are Her, Arc Publications, 2010.