Observe the sparrows

………………………who cluster in drabs

and treat people as mobile dessert bars.

The sparrows who haunt our picnic tables

and wrestle with pigeons for crumbs and crusts,

who hop like beans in a frying pan,

one eye always perky for cats.

Study the sparrows

……………………..who nest among downspouts,

in drainpipes, in ragged holes in the hedges,

who flutter and scuffle at traffic lights

snatching fag ends and chips

and their own wing tips

out from under huge wheels.

Consider the sparrows

……………………….who’ve left behind wilderness

shifted to cities and married their cousins.

Moved in. Moved up. Made a niche.
.

Published in The Summer King, Otago University Press, 2009

Featured here with permission.

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About the Poem:

As you may have gathered from my own poem, The Sparrows, which marked the conclusion to the short ekphrastic poetry series last week, I am rather fond of sparrows.  This poem by Joanna Preston, from the Venery sequence in her multiple, major award-winning collection, The Summer King, is one of my favourites on the topic.

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About the Poet:

Joanna Preston is an Australian-born poet, editor and freelance writing tutor who lives in a small rural town in Canterbury, New Zealand. In 2008 she won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry. Her first collection, The Summer King, was published by Otago University Press in July 2009, and won the Mary Gilmore Award for the best first poetry collection by an Australian author in 2010.

She has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan (Wales). She worked for three years as a part-time tutor in Creative Writing at Christchurch Polytech, and and was co-editor of Kokako magazine from 2009 to 2012.

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