Song Owen Sheers

If we were magpies love,
and some day a bright bait caught your eye
and you were taken in a magpie trap,

a siren in a cage, then I would stay,
perch above you, spread my wings in the rain
and fan you with my feathers in the sun.

And when the others came,
drawn by the oil spill of your plumage,
the darkness of your eye,

I'd watch them strut in,
squawking to their doom
to find themselves trapped.

All night I'd listen to their confusion,
the beat of wing on wire, until the morning
and the farmer came to wring their lives away.

And through the winter I would feed you,
dropping the mites like the kisses to your beak.
And in the Spring I'd sing, touch my wings to yours

while we waited for that day
when the farmer, realising at last as all men must
that love is all there is to save,