Goldfinch
for Jack Thacker
Soundbitesize memories belong not to goldfish
but to us, who are probably not goldfish. Cultish
devotion to culling one tiddly square of lichen.
A view not to my liking: goldfinch – nugget-chicken,
cocoa with notes of jam and custard,
candied pine cone built out of a buzzard –
says Buzz off, biohazard; won’t buzz me in.
An angel’s branding-bastard rusting in Edenic rain.
Of the two finches glimpsed in the garden
I can filch no vocab to farewell the gone one.
This other’s a bother. Riffling Some Trees,
hanging around like wind broken in cemeteries,
picking pinched harmonies to a twig’s first snap:
startle, nut, nettle-sting. Snub. Unsatisfied sap.