The Parliament Of Birds

Clouds airbrushed on aluminium;
peat-brown shadows of scrub — these hardly stir
as a kelp gull glides over its image,
lands with a card trick of wings; an egret tracks
a quartet of diving black cormorants;
the heron peers from its harlequined patch.
On the mud-flat, ibis and moorhens feed.
Swans delve offshore, remoulding their shapes,
or float upstream with Euclidean smoothness,
able to move through opposites at will.
The river is a still mind but for bird thoughts
that dip beaks or rise as suddenly as
the swans whose white-fringed wings chequer
searchlights beamed from gold rips in cloud.