Whimbrels

Curious,
the whimbrels stretch
and peer above the gorse.
Having arrived, swift,
swooping like swallows,
they are encountering some things
for the first time, driven down by
winds on strange sea coasts.
Hikers, beef cattle, kites,
and barbed wire,
force them to flit from beach to cliff,
settling at last on the “friendly taiga”,
which is in fact, blackened gorse,
last year’s tourist’s
dogend’s fire.


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