For Billie Holiday

Your voice,

like smoked honey,
like creaking mahogany,

like roasted chestnuts in late November,

or a rainy Sunday afternoon

in a faded part of town.

Your voice,

an owl's plaintive cry

drifting through an opened window,

weaving in with the purr of the cat on the lap

and the crackling of the fire.

Your voice,

a hung-over clarinet,

throaty and full of regret

after a night of heady carousal.

I hear you now

as I wash these dishes,

alone on this grey morning,

after my own sweet share

of boozing and tomfoolery.

I hear you,

ghostly from the radio,

telling me not to be afraid,

not even of loneliness,

because that’s a gift too –

reminding us we're alive

and one day we won't be.

I hear you telling me,

despite it all, Lady Day,

that everything

will be okay.

We know that’s not true

but it’s important to say it;

even more so to sing it.

And no one sang it, Lady Day –

still no one sings it – 
like you.

Herring Gull

The bird

that still thinks

it’s a velociraptor.

*

Gull choreography:

Stalk, strut,

strike a pose;

thrust out neck,

snap wide zealous beak

– tongue rearing like an irate snake –

scream victory at the world.

*

With its

jerky motions,

vitric eyes and

swazzle screech;

its red-stained

hook of a nose –

avian cousin

to Mr Punch.

*

Hobbies include:

scavenging,

squabbling,

jeering,

thievery.

 *

City-slicking atavist –

how at home you are

in this domain

of men!

For Skip James

When Skip James sings

‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’

with a voice as high and light and sad

as the silhouette of a sparrow

           against a winter sun,

and somehow makes the strings of his guitar

tug shivers

from a heart you’d thought was set,

know that this is music

not from the soul

or for the soul

but of the soul.

Don’t expect

to find in it a flake of comfort.

It pretends to answer nothing,

offers no guidance or praise.

This is no hymn.

It is the song of a sparrow

that flew steeply into the blue,

and came back none the wiser –

          as lonely as the sun.