Goodbye cruel year, I’m glad you’ve gone away.
Out of my bedroom I watch as sparrows,
And blue tits, hop about in top branches
Of the red berried cotoneaster.
They queue in turn for the nut dispenser.
Sometimes they wait whilst two fat woodpeckers
Eat their fill in a highfalutin way,
As if the birdnuts are their property,
Strong arming smaller birds out the picture.
It’s not cold enough for the birds to eat
Any cotoneaster berries yet,
Perhaps in mid January they will.
Meanwhile hundreds of people die each day,
We’ll all be vaccinated come Easter,
So news editors blare in their headlines.
By then we might bury forty thousand
More coronavirus nineteen victims.
The madness of twenty twenty goes on.
Meanwhile a nuthatch arrives, pluckily
Shoulders greedy woodpecker to one side.
If we could emulate nuthatches,
And shove bent politicians to one side
Perhaps new normal might just be better.
Robin Redbreast watches and sings alone,
Spring ain’t far off, he doesn’t like bird nuts.

Harry Rogers, in the Yellow Room, December 31st 2020.