Scrambling the Number Stations

I like to look at the birds
Not like some bird watcher
With a faint whiff of voyeurism up his nostrils
Just from my windows sometimes
Or if I’m walking down the street
I could stop and look for
A couple of minutes
No problem
I like it when they’re in a tree, singing
Or feeding their young
Or fighting
They do that a lot
Follow each other from tree to tree sometimes
Fluttering and squawking at each other
Or when they all take off together
In a group of hundreds
And change direction all in unison
Like a wave tossed upon a tumbling sea
It gives me a real sense of peace
Their motion
It fascinates me
It’s a miracle I think
The sight of a bird in flight
With the backdrop of the clouds
And the morning
I go for
A walk in the countryside
Or a park. Sit down on a bench
By a pond or a lake
And have a look at the ducks and the squirrels
Going about their daily lives
Swans lightly pass
Oh the aching nature of September evenings
The colours of the daytime blend
And I
Transformed by their movements
From loneliness to grace
Am stilled
The surrounding trees so stern and easy sway
Like dancers in a sad song
I sit there
For an hour or so
And take my ease
‘Tis fair nice to get away from the city
For a while
From the concrete
And the stress and the strain
And the anger that London instils inside of you
Always in a rush
Never getting anywhere
To take a deep breath and fill your lungs
With your own worthlessness
And breathe it back out
As something renewed
And stark
The sighs escaping one by one
But now calmed
No sense of need
To walk on the leaves
When they’re brown-yellow,
Fresh fallen, crisp and all over the place
And have a little think
About who I am.
You know, it’s easy to get lost
And to not even know it
Walking through the tunnels of the tube
Nobody talks
Cos nobody listens
Except the beggars
They’re all ears
So what do you give
The people who have nothing at all?
The dignity of conversation
In a city loud with silence
And impassive rolling eyes
And all the tanned-up twits
Like broken roses
From the vine

Ah I don’t know a single thing
That isn’t worth forgetting
But the birds, I swear,
The birds always put me in a good mood
Their songs flicker like catacomb candles
Through the car horns and
The bus stops
I like to get to know all the different
Types and traits
They have their own personalities
Pigeons and crows
And the singers in the trees
I see them perched upon the stock brick walls
Or chirping from the chimney tops
Or lined up on the masts or radio antennae
Scrambling the number stations
And all’s well
For a while
In my little thirsty pueblo of the soul.