With Birds You're Never Lonely

• ''I can't hear the barista''
• ''over the coffee machine.''
• ''Spoons slam, steam rises.''
• ''I catch the eye of a man''
• ''sitting in the corner''
• ''of the cafe reading alone''
• ''about trees which is, incidentally,''
• ''all I can think about''
• ''since returning.''
• ''Last week I sat alone''
• ''on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest''
• ''with sun-syrupped Kauri trees''
• ''and brazen Tui birds with white tufts''
• ''and yellow and black beaks.''
• ''They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly''
• ''I had to turn off my hearing aids.''
• ''When all sound disappeared, I was tuned''
• ''into a silence that was not an absence.''
• ''As I switched sound on again,''
• ''silence collapsed.''
• ''The forest spat all the birds back,''
• ''and I was jealous—''
• ''the earthy Kauri trees, their endless''
• ''brown and green trunks of sturdiness.''
• ''I wondered what the trees would say about us?''
• ''What books would they write if they had to cut us down?''
• ''Later, stumbling from the forest I listened''
• ''to a young Maori woman.''
• ''She could tell which bird chirped,''
• ''who said with birds you’re never lonely.''
• ''In that moment I felt sorry''
• ''for any grey tree in London,''
• ''for the family they don’t have,''
• ''the Gods they can’t hold.''