Two Poems by Anthony Ward

Symphony

I hear House martins like spitfires

Firing heat rays over roof tops,
Starlings mimicking a firework display of sound,
Swallows chattering upon the telephone wires,
The Nightjar croaking like a computer connecting,
Amidst the woods where the Chiffchaff chafes like a wheel
Stridulating against the Bullfinch’s metallic trill,
Where the Woodpecker raps impatiently through the day unspotted,
Only heard like the timbered calls of Tawny Owls throughout the night,
When the Nightingale practices rolling its rrrrs
Before the Song Thrush begins its overture to morning,
Back to the garden where the Robin gets fruity
Agitating Tits with their high pitched notes,
As Collard Doves chant united
Amongst a cacophony of crows that squabble and bicker,
Murdering the cheery sound of the Blackbird
Whistling the weather after the storm has cleared.

Winter

We witness the resilience of nature,

Bared to the bone as we layer ourselves,
Playing dead so that we may leave it alone,
Looking intensely beautiful amongst condensed afternoons
Where night lingers with crepuscule light throughout the timid day.

The silhouettes of solitary birds perched upon closed gates,

Attached to open fences
Exposed in their decrepitude,
While the robin’s breast,
Lacerated by the serrated leaves of holly,
Colours the berries with shades of intrepidness

While we reminisce upon those vibrant summers

Once apparelled in eternity,
Before the smouldering cindered embers turned to ash
Beneath the hoary fog-
The sky having decanted its delicate crystals
With the presence of life captured like light upon a film.

Anthony Ward tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including The Faircloth Review, The Pygmy Giant, Shot Glass Journal, Pyrokinection, Turbulence, Underground, The Bohemyth, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.