Red Squirrel

 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:

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