pueblo – Page 21 – don't confuse the narrator

bird on a wire

From his aerial perch
a starling
chips at the wintering sky

I’m much better at recognising birds when I see them than by their calls, but I’ve started to recognise the jays and the azure winged magpies, though I really only know one from the other by the number of voices heard at once; the hoopoe is quite familiar, too, and I’ve now come to associate a sort of hollow rattling cackle with the starlings. (I was going to describe the noise as a ‘grackle’, but find that that is actually the name of a bird, which is a bit confusing.)
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winter approaches

When the white clouds lifted, they left behind
a hint of snow along the mountain ridge. The sky
is blue as any summer’s day and I walk to the village
in unbroken sunshine. On the way back, a neighbour
eases his donkey from amble to pause and greets me.
He wants some windfall apples “pa’ el guarro”. I agree,
but would so much prefer to let the patient burro
mumble fruit from my palm, not help to fatten
the squealing pig for Martinmas.

(First draft – which means I’ve only rewritten it half a dozen times and juggled the line breaks back and forth and to and fro, but haven’t added in additional material or stepped back from it very far.)
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images: both photographic and poetic

One problem with trying to find illustrations for some of the pieces I post here is that I’m between cameras and the phone isn’t as adaptable as I’d like it to be, so the photos – particularly the ones that should be close ups – are fairly hit and miss.

These wonderfully clam-like toadstools would probably have made a better photo to go with the smallest room in all the world: