Peregrine - a poem

Peregrines inspire in so many ways. The fastest creature on earth can hardly fail to impress.

Children watch and ask their questions; visitors search the skies at the sound of startled falcon in flight. Artist paint and photographers point their cameras, whilst around the world people watch from their homes, each viewer as remote as the peregrines' own nest, but brought together by a common fascination and interest.  So it should be of no surprise that Derby's peregrines have inspired poetic thoughts, too. We previously published work by local poet, Ray Woodland, but today we are proud to publish a very different piece of work, by Cheshire poet, Caroline Hawkridge.

Caroline Hawkridge is a webcam watcher whose grandfather came from Derby. She has written a prize-winning poem inspired by our peregrines and donated her winnings to this project. ‘Peregrine’ was Highly Commended in the national York Open Poetry competition and published in the Scottish-US poetry magazine The Dark Horse, http://www.thedarkhorsemagazine.com/.

Caroline says, “for me, Derby’s peregrines have a strange beauty and are beautifully strange, especially through different cameras and against the cityscape. Like urban peregrines, my poem is unconventional, sweeping across verses to echo their flight. The changing line length is also intended to act like a lens, focusing in and out.

The poem begins with a song from the blog one Christmas and then weaves together snippets from 2009 including Cathy’s fall (see archive). However, I wanted readers elsewhere to feel that peregrines could arrive in their city too so, for example, I changed Jury’s Inn into a skyscraper. Also, ‘wet flies and flymphs’ are artificial fish bait created by dressing a hook with tiny pieces of feather to mimic an insect.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Nick B, Nick M, the cathedral and all concerned for their tremendous ongoing commitment to these birds and their global audience.”  

Peregrine

1. Foreign, imported from abroad, outlandish.

2. Kind of falcon much used for hawking.

            Concise Oxford

The blog sings

Four golden plover, three...

then says the cathedral was table

for woodcock

while the country sat down

to turkey.

The bell-tower’s peregrines open

the ribs of migrants

all winter. And a blackbird

on the North side.

Spring spreads its breast feathers, lets the bald

skin of the sun

brood. The cathedral clock nudges the city

with its long bill. Lenses wait, want

to annunciate.

She will

fidget                                                                                      

four rufous eggs

by the lion-tailed rump of a gargoyle

and several webcam

eyeballs. The nostril in her beak wears the bony

inlet cone of a jet engine.

Even sleep is ascent as her lower lid rises

to close.

A starling’s coverts chequer her ledge. Its hackles, prized

by fly-dressers for wet flies and flymphs,

were cast. The tiercel keeps surfacing from the bottom

of the city.

He blots

a serif of the new

letter ‘R’, the lustre of his feet illuminating the blue

like the idle yellow crane. Only the ‘Y’ to finish

glass-office minting sky. Here,

again in his gloves: on

a stone finial, police aerial, council roof safety rails, stashing

a corpse in a quatrefoil.

Viewers hatch

their global locations

on the blog, a line of tourists sprockets past the telescope

on the green

below, as he reads

them this city,

leaves

the bloodied bill of a snipe, the yellow-green

leg of a moorhen taken

to the radio station. She will

feed

the lead gape

of the nave roof its confetti

of feet and beaks.

A world is

asking,

admiring, angry, arguing; the growing clamour

like the oldest ring

of ten bells in England not

deafening the wing-spreading

chicks

crowding

the tower’s high pavement, opening

and closing their fledging

umbrellas like spoke-dodging

commuters, until the odd gets

caught, spirals off

the cathedral.

The blog uploads

wing bones fossilised in light;

the wind’s angel born

bent. All day,

she will 


call.