At the Border

When I tilt the can over the herb border
she's planted, no water comes.
I tilt again, but still nothing shows.
Leaves, I suppose, have clogged
the spout from last autumn, rotted and plugged
so the water's locked in.

With both hands I lift to eye level
the laden, awkward can and tip again.
This roadside gift fallen from a builder’s truck,
battered and cement-stained, with no rose,
has been ours for three different gardens. It won't work,
and I am miming in that silent film
where the children have stepped on the hose.

I lower it and shake, until from the sharp funnel
emerges like a pencil lead the beak
and then the head of a bird.
I make the water force it halfway through
until the shoulders clear and it thrusts
like some bow-sprit figure from the spout.
It is absurd and saddening - its eyes shut,
a blind, futile arrow.

One of this spring's young, curious,
has flown into the can's nesting dark
where I left it safe under the sycamores
and, soft thing, after its flutter
in the echoing space has chosen
that jewel of light promised at the spout
before the easy freedom of the can's wide brim.

Pointing its way up the shaft of blue sky
this days-old starling
wormed its way into a coffin of light
which tightened and starved it in the mildest of springs.
Now, in the early summer sun, I lift the can once more
and force the bird in a shower of wet light
out and into the herb border.

Safe from the magpies and neighbours' cats
in the musk of rosemary and marjoram,
worked by the weather, bone and feather
break down into soil that
feeds our parsley, chives and thyme.