In panic he meets me on the stairs, this blue-green titmouse, dainty bill agape; gripping the lamp flex, leaning out, a raffish boatman at the shrouds.
Softly, I draw the curtain back, let down the window sash, and make a soft tsk! tsk! to show there's no great danger in his way.
He reads me, sees, seems to smell the dark and in two moves, flicks his weightless, feathered self, first to the outer folds; then, like Bede's lone sparrow, trades warmth, light and company, for endless night.
Mike Bannister Mike Bannister’s most recent collection is Pocahontas in Ludgate (Arrowhead Press, Darlington 2007). He runs the Café Poets in Halesworth, Suffolk.