Ultra by Robert Nisbet

The blackbird’s song has finished now,

no more is heard of Orange Beak’s celebrations,

and in mid-July, young Morris,

released for now from education’s cramp,

steps out from parents’ home, past laurel bush,

sensing, surely, the shift of twigs and nest

and Blackbird’s history.

On up the street, he passes gardens,

the odd cat sleeping, senses, beneath the fur,

the muscle and sinew flexing, the teeth,

discreetly veiled, ready for enemy.

Samantha emerges, with her little ones.

(He pauses to help her latch her gate,

steady the push-chair). He catches the scent

of a milkiness about her.

Outside the corner shop, in summer grace,

are the two girls from the Haven Road,

surely the town’s best lookers.

Dare he sense at least, beneath T-shirts

and white jeans, the stir of limb

and history’s fecundity?

* First published in The Linnet’s Wings (Ireland), Summer 2017

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who has been published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA, appearing regularly in San Pedro River Review and Panoply. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2020.