MERRYN WILLIAMS

She hands you a glass, you never thank her;
you’re far too busy chatting up
the great man (for it is a man) whose name
is blazoned in red letters over the programme.
Go lick his spittle, sip your Chardonnay;
his audience yours, for a fraction of a day.

From one dark corner of one eye you glimpse them –
readers in long queues, waiting for him to sign.
Your books are stacked with his; your photo grins from
the stands; perhaps one day you’ll mount his throne.
Inside this tent, you’re clapped, the rising star.
Out there in the streets, they still don’t know who you are.

The fourth time that I saw the kingfisher –
which unexpectedly streaked overhead –
or perched, precarious, on a swaying sapling –
and never realised that its breast was red –

at once depression lifted. I am used to
infrequent sights of heron, grebe or owl,
yet hardly, in that bleak November, hoped for
this miracle. Its flesh (they say) tastes foul,

but that does not concern me. I can count them,
spaced out, those brief amazing times I’ve seen,
across my river, which moves all before it,
bears all away, that flash of brilliant green.

I spotted a kingfisher (for only the fourth time) by the Thames in November 2020 after months of lockdown. It instantly lifted my spirits.

Some people fall into a sly black hole.
I surf the net, find young good-looking men
I knew years back, now bald and gross, and some
others there were, I cannot find at all.

Some names are quite unusual; though I spell
them right, there’s no response; they’re either dead
or stunned by beer and pills, or lost abroad;
and some I’ve quite forgotten. Just as well.

I count them out, those who were young with me.
There’s the night sky, now slowly turning grey,
some few bright stars still burn at break of day;
behind them, multitudes that you can’t see.

I type my own name in the flattened square;
a hundred thousand references appear.