‘goldfinches’ by Simon Rennie

Posted by sr480

Read at Inn Verse February 2021

goldfinches

when I was a child I lived by a park
and the dark dirty city 
darker and dirtier then
seemed to end at the end of my street

pigeons and sparrows were street birds 
whose bald chicks would fall from gutters
and lie prone big-eyed and startled 
for toddlers to poke with sticks

but the birds in the park were different
their bald chicks fell from real nests
and were sucked back into the soil
and no-one saw their scrawny necks

I had a little book of british birds
so old its pictures were called plates
only some of the plates were colour
and this made those birds special

one birthday my dad took me to town
to the big camera shop with the big windows
everything was for looking through and at
and my dad said ornithologists had binoculars

the man tried to sell us some small ones
small for birds and small for boys
but my dad insisted we get the big ones
16 bi 50 they’re the ones we want

the man said we could spot planes with them
or the mountains of the moon
I just thought the birds would look bigger
and I liked that all binoculars were plural

I had two favourite birds in the little book
both with colour plates of course
one big and one small but both gold
and exotic in their own way

I couldn’t believe these animals
lived in the same country as me
the golden eagle was fierce and noble
the goldfinch seemed designed by genius

I used to draw the golden eagle 
in profile with its vicious hooked
yellow beak and its neck feathers 
so big you could make them out

I never tried to draw the goldfinch
I knew I would never do it justice
that it would look like I’d made
such a thing up to impress

the next year they brought in a law
to clean up the air everywhere
and all the two-up-two-downs
for miles around had to change their coal

when the chimneys stopped smoking
and blackening the terraced streets
it was like the birds woke up
or came back off holiday

my lenses began slowly to fill
with birds I had never seen
and I even didn’t mind so much
that the binoculars were so heavy to lift

one day in the park at the top of my street
I saw a flash of gold in a poplar tree 
my heart beat fast as I found the focus
it wasn’t an eagle of course

but that day a truth was confirmed
goldfinches did live in the same country as me
and they were designed by genius
and I still didn’t want to try to draw one

I didn’t see another one for years
and then I began to see more
I still never got used to their sparkle
to that concentrated detail of colour

now I live in the country
and just before I wrote this
a dozen goldfinches flew from a conifer
in the garden and swerved above me

each of them reminds me of the first I saw
in the flesh and feather and in the book
they definitely deserve a colour plate
and I’ve still never seen a golden eagle

Simon Rennie is Associate Professor of Victorian Poetry at the University of Exeter. He co-founded Inn Verse in 2007 and has hosted it off and on ever since.