God’s signature1 (A sonnet)
Oh, I’d known you from Welsh castle bailey,
I’d known you friendly and winsome in zoos,
I’d known you from old Flintshire heraldry,
So on to Cornwall with nothing to lose;
Except a sign on England’s crag-top’d air.
In nineteen seventy-one I was there.
One bird left to tease my childhood affair
With a red-booted temptress so rare.
Over the Welsh cliffs the chough cried outloud;
A pinpoint mark on the vaulted heaven
Winging the midway-air hidden by cloud
Before plummeting to wave-top’d ocean.
Oh, she teased me with more than I could bear.
Over the sea, God’s sign. See! Oh, see. There!
© RM Meyer
Braeintra, Highland, June 2023
1 Ian Bullock, doyen of Chough pioneers, once said to me, as we gazed at the Lizard coast, ‘This is perfect. All it needs is God’s signature in the top corner.”
