Mark Hamilton - Bishop's Stortford, Herts

One dark Sunday afternoon in January,
trailing back from KFC to the car,
past half-hearted shops half empty
with shoppers like shadows, half-spent,

the children, my wife and I,

were stopped, astonished,
by a crowd of dim birds
in a clump of thin trees
singing like a mad choir of angels

- there in Bishop's Stortford, Herts -

rapt in a ravishing realm of their own,
trilling, spilling, billowing out joy
for no reason except they were alive

(no sunset, no sunrise, no light breaking
in celestial skies) ,

just singing,
on a dull grey afternoon,

because they were alive, alive,
because that is the important, the magical thing,

because life, no matter what, life,
as soon as it stops,

starts

Mark Hamilton

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bishop-s-stortford-herts/