A female hummingbird feeding her chicks
Photo : Wikimedia Commons / Wolfgang Wander
A female hummingbird feeding her chicks Photo : Wikimedia Commons / Wolfgang Wander

Motherbird

Five poems
A female hummingbird feeding her chicks<br />Photo : Wikimedia Commons / Wolfgang Wander
A female hummingbird feeding her chicks
Photo : Wikimedia Commons / Wolfgang Wander

Motherbird Can't Fly

Motherbird on my back,
        I cope uncertainly
            with the lift-off. Upstroke

downstroke upstroke
       up up up.
            She is all wingbone

all weighty fragility.
       It's years now since she
            soared into the sky.

But it's not the same sky!
       she calls out.
            Where are we?

The energy it takes
           to stay up here with her,
               to hover!

Careful she cries,
           ever fearful for her life.
             Look out!

 Don't fly into the sun.
      Don't stall,
             don't stop, don't even…

The wind snatches her voice.
           There's no route
              no narrative or plot.

The sky has no end
           but we're near the end –
              of somewhere.

Keep steady
she commands.

We're a single bird in flight.

Motherbird Asks Me to Try Out Her New Stick

I open my wings.
I close them.
I open my heart. I close it.
And open it a bit.

Take hold of the stick
that I don't yet
might never need.
Take a tentative step…

Then Motherbird Met Fatherbird

and fatherbird met motherbird
so many feathers of the world

were ruffled. It was just after the War,
and now this war – of attitudes.

It's unnatural
protested the birds on the airfield.

 They're a different species…
Rain couldn't drown the courtship

of motherbird and fatherbird.
The clouds parted to let them through.

The sky rang –
and slowly, deliberately like a stage-set

a whole landscape slid into place.
With certainty – and uncertainty

motherbird and fatherbird
flew off. Flew back. And settled.

They didn't drift like leaves.
This our home now they said

stretching the world at its seams.

* * *

Her Feathers

I envy motherbird her silken feathers –
so much more beautiful than my own.

They've acquired a silvery perfection.

They're a nuisance
      she complains, so fine, so flyaway.
            They're marvellous I say –
she's dismissive
and I can't convince her

Motherbird! I call to her.
      Hush! whisper the feathers

      We give little away.
            You must place your ear
                  very close
                        to hear our snow-words.

Nesting

Now
she nests in me

along with all
that I've known

and all that I know
of what she has known –

~ Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire, England. Her first two collections were published by Oxford University Press: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Whitbread poetry prizes, and A Bowl of Warm Air (1996). Her later poetry titles have all been published by Bloodaxe and include Split World: Poems 1990-2005 (2008),  Europa (2008) and At the Time ofPartition (2013). Both these last two books were Poetry Book Society Choices shortlisted for T.S. Eliot Prize.

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