Magpie 2. It's Personal!

188 25 10
                                    

A four-wheeled item in a flow

of traffic, I am, coming out of
country bypass at just one set
of big roundabout lights. Stuck!

Magpie, perched on pedestrian railing
Is it a magpie? Biggest ever feck I saw,
jumps down, waddles towards me.

Beaks towards me, and I'm trapped!
It's coming to the kerb. It halts. Looks sharp.
And now it's on the road - and I can't see!

Expect at any second now the thing
to wing up, batter my side window,
one mad-eye winking while beak bashes.

But lights change and the pied bird
hops off the road from nigh under
my tyres with a wriggler* dangling.

.........................

*I mean a wriggling worm or larva dangling in his beak...

Bare ShoulderedWhere stories live. Discover now