the red & the grey
 

Or in Formby, on the Merseyside, formerly Lancashire, coast, where there are thousands of the little bleeders & they are practically a cult. Notice how no one ever has a good word to say for grey squirrels, whose antics often cheer my gloomy walk into town? You can get away with anything these days unless you're a terrorist, a paedophile or a grey squirrel.

Nice one, George. I think the nightingale is harder. Or maybe it's just that I find it irresistible to make fun of Wordsworth.

The Cuckoo’s Reply to the Poet

O William! Shall I call you Bill?
How kind of you, dear Guest,
To come and watch me lay an egg
In a reed-warbler’s nest!

While dumber birds get bleary-eyed
Stuffing my kids’ big beaks,
I’m free to sing and herald Spring
To poets on the peaks.

I sometimes dine on eggs and chicks,
But insects are my vice.
A hairy caterpillar is
Particularly nice.

Try one, they’re delectable!
What’s that? You can’t stay?
I shall call Cuckoo! and anoint you
As you go your way.

the easy target
 

O Wordsworth! shall I call thee Bard,
Or but a wandering Mind
Who churns our doggerel by the yard
And talks through his behind?

A cuckoo is an actual bird
And not an abstract force
Or 'twofold shout' occultly heard
From some veiled, mystic source.

We cuckoos have two wings, two legs,
A beak, a tail, the works.
We fly around. We lay our eggs
(Though parenting's for jerks).

Your urge to disembody me
Needs imminent restraint.
A space invader I may be;
Ethereal I ain't.

Let me tell you, Bazza, that I have seen a black squirrel round here. And there's a white one in today's Daily Turdigraph. Far too many good cuckoos about. Here's a nightingale.


Nightingale

If I, a bird, may speak to you, a man,
Your state of mind gives rise to some alarm.
I’m giving you the best advice I can.
DON’T DRINK THAT HEMLOCK: it may do you harm.
It won’t be Lethe. It’ll be the Styx,
A one-way ticket to the terminus.
Is that your only option – down and out?
An everlasting fix
That fixes nothing? Life itself’s a plus,
And that’s what birds and poets sing about.

P.S. I said the same to Socrates.
He could have lived in Corinth at his ease

Ode to John Keats

The weariness, the fever, and the fret
are commonplace among the leaves, dear John,
where every rainfall makes my feathers wet
as you, the poet, pace your dry salon

declaiming that the problem in my head
is 'too much happiness.' Can you be real?
Now more than ever do I wish you dead.
Upon the midnight? Fine. Right now? Ideal.

My song is not my leisure, but my duty.
You sit there with your pen and think you're deep.
The truth? Birds have it bad. Enjoy your beauty.
The nightingale must wake so poets sleep.

I'd say George is good for the fiver, Catherine could do much better (call Clementine), John's latest is a winner, Roger's is a hot contender, Bazza's, though brilliant of course, is perhaps too angry - didn't charm me like the others. Jerome's needs more birdiness.

honky squirrel
 

'And there's a white one in today's Daily Turdigraph.'

In that publication it would have to be white unless it had committed a major (probably sexual) crime.

I think squirrels are committing sexual crimes all the time. Their private lives are a disgrace.

O Poet, since thy song began,
I hear but don't rejoice.
O Wordsworth! shall I call thee Man,
Or but a pompous Voice?

While thou art lying on the grass
Thy onefold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
So humourless and drear.

Though babbling only to the Vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thy thoughts are dull, thy rhymes are stale,
Yet they go on for hours.

O blessed Man! the earth we share
I must confess I'd rather
Depart to go most anywhere
I wouldn't hear you blather.

.
O hoo-hoo! William, there you sit,
and court me with a verse.
Your love is running fowl a bit
and come to be a curse!

You call me “darling” and admire
my voice and very presence,
but yesterday I spied you, sire,
cavorting with the pheasants!

O hoo hoo! William, worthless words
assail me without stopping.
It’s time I soared like other birds,
descending with a dropping!
.