for Karen Knight                                                                         

Little finch, head tilted

you note my presence, a guest in your house:
 

execute a backward somersault

land neatly near your water bowl

return to your perch for another.

You check I’m still watching

not diverted by four galahs outside

sharing breakfast with the hens.

You ring your bell, demand attention:

drop to your food bowl, scatter seed

and play with the beads on your abacus.

I really must leave but you draw me back

whistling the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th.

I cannot resist your zest for life.

  *

Little finch, you were much smaller

when your human mother found you

early on Christmas Day

severely pecked and bleeding –

the weak one pushed out of the nest.
 

Twice she put you back.

The third time she took you inside

fed you hourly with a dropper

sang to you, played you CDs.

Against the odds you survived.

  *

The gods have smiled on you.

Or was it as legend relates:

the One God whose Son you helped

by pecking at the Crown of Thorns

as He carried His Cross to Calvary?

Were you protecting Him

from further pain? Or helping yourself

to thistle seeds? Or both?

That splash of red on your head

a reminder of His Blood?

  *

You’ve been immortalised in paintings

lightly perched on the Madonna’s hand.

Your precepts: life is short

we should seize every moment

build goals, take pleasure in small things.

Little finch, you’ve shown me

how to live my remaining years.