A shiver
 in the branches of the copper
 beech – bare still, spring’s shimmer
 not yet budded – and now you leap, skitter
  
 along
 the wall and down
 the wooden gatepost, then bound,
 ears pert, tail long, across the March-damp ground
  
 to clamber
 up the viburnum
 on which the peanut feeder
 hangs: robins, coal tits and finches scatter.
  
 Crouched
 upon a branch,
 front paws to mouth, round-haunched,
 tail fluffed and crimped across your back, you munch
  
 on peanuts
 ferociously, as
 I, confined, watch through the glass
 of the window. Your obsidian eyes meet my gaze. 

‘Red Squirrel’ was published in Allegro Poetry Issue 18, September 2018: