Glass Bird in Shop Window

Surely the maker of this bird is
one whose winter months are lived
among deep silences of snow,

who understands the blue and purple
bruise of folds among the drifts,
who knows

the strange transparencies of ice,
the way light toes on it
a fragile dance?

I have been standing here so long
my feet have slipped into
boots of fur,

snow settles on my shoulders
under dank green pine
and snow-locked birch.

Ice splits; a bird flies up,
freckles the freezing air
with blue.

A shudder of snow
ushers its escape.

Football, Kuala Lumpur

Rain loves this place, loves
the way the open hands
of city trees receive it,
the way its great drops
trampoline the pavements.

It sends the people
scattering for taxis,
forests of umbrellas sprung
like orchids opening,
It empties streets and

brings a thousand frogs
chuckling from the storm-drain walls,
calls out barefoot boys
to football pitches
where they kick the ball

through floods of water,
spray and warm steam flying.
Arcs of rainbow fly from foot to foot,
shrieks of laughter mingle
with the chortling of frogs

that leap and spring
in their own games
on every pavement’s edge.

Gill McEvoy won the 2015 Michael Marks Award for The First Telling (Happenstance Press). Gill is a Hawthornden Fellow and has had two poetry collections published by Cinnamon Press.