Blackbird

Image credit: Derek Braithwaite

I found in the early hours a blackbird
Dead on the patio, innards intact, supine
No tell-tale blood left at the scene of the crime
Its feeble form laid out on the concrete slab
No longer waiting for the morning to arise

Blackbird dying in the dead of night
Forever absent from our private dawn chorus
Its song stopped in the graveyard of our back garden
An omen, or presager of metaphysical change

I scoop up its unfluttering tiny frame
Laying it down to rest
to compost down to its constituent parts:
Feathers, wings, beak, bone, syrinx
A portent of life eternal