Survivor, September

Generous with gold as a brass band in sunshine;
Inscribed leaves lobed like flippers of Permian amphibians,
Neighbours now extinct. Overnight they fall
Kissing her feet, illuminating the autumn grass,
Gilding the ground. Forebears of dinosaurs ate her fruit,
Oval, soft and stinking. Hundred-million-year-old eggs.
 

Jan Bay-Petersen

published in The Alchemy Spoon 3, 2022

 
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Kea *

They gaze at us
with bright remorseless eyes.
 
They fly to roadworks and shift traffic cones
inspect the halted cars
remove windscreen wipers, hubcaps
with the accelerated grace
of a Formula One pit team.
 
Olive green, they blend
with miles of scree and wind-tormented scrub
until they fly –
the flash of underwings
the blaze of red.
 
At dawn in alpine tramping huts
glissando shrieks, a knifeblade scraping tin;
kea skiing down the roof
balanced on outstretched claws,
tumbling from gutters
raucous with delight.
 
Their mates eviscerate
rucksacks left unattended;
spread dirty laundry on display
puncture packs of food and mobile phones
stab tins and use them for lacrosse
hurl them from beak to beak.
 
Boots unlaced, their laces disappeared,
the ground peppered with eyelets.
 
After sparse forage for a million years
now kea gorge – potato crisps,
panini plucked from tourists,
kidney fat from living sheep.
 
Birds exist in the spaces between human lives,
once wide as the world;
The Southern Alps today are mined
by corridors of cars, that buffet kea,
press them flat; dried specimens
for a museum cabinet.
 
 
   * Kea: Rhymes with “fear”. The world’s only alpine parrot, an endangered species native to New Zealand
 

Jan Bay-Petersen

published in The North 64, 2020

 
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The Elegance of Rooks

Rooks wait around the walnut tree near the crossing.
This autumn they have begun to stuff nuts
beneath the tyres of waiting cars.
 
They haven’t mastered red lights yet,
the lethal tension between greed and green.
They hover, tentative and quick to squawk.
 
Like diplomats in a hard posting
rooks are inured to uproar;
if they lose their sangfroid it is on purpose.
 
Fluttered by dogs, they take off almost late,
flap low above those frantic, furry heads,
lure them out into the traffic.
 
Their bossy stride, like bellied aldermen, late
for an important meeting, can suddenly morph
into a balletic leap.
 
Those strong beaks, skilled at cracking skulls
of baby squirrels, disembowelling
crisp packets and fledglings
 
tenderly neck and nibble their own
as a soldier might gently stroke his baby
with a bayonet.
 
We respect their bravado, their lack of deference.
They are court jesters, barely tolerated,
we are their meat-in-waiting.
 

Jan Bay-Petersen

published in The North 64, 2020

 
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Performance

     After John Cage 
 
First night at the Barbican. Silence falls
as the conductor lifts his baton. And continues.
A thousand waiting ears listen alert
their owners quiet and still. The orchestra sits grim
skilled hands gripping polished instruments,
all tuned, all mute. There are three parts:
a symphony of silence, a three-piece suite of smoke.
By the second movement, expectation foiled,
the audience turns sour. It coughs.
Eyes slide away from the conductor
and stare at polished shoes.
They clap, though, at the end.
 
When performed in China
by the end of the first movement
there were mutterings. Complaints grew louder.
The third Tacet was marked by catcalls
and cheerful insults to the lazy orchestra.
Old men cracked melon seeds between their teeth.
The bag was passed from hand to ,hand
a crackle of percussion in its wake.
Their seats had cost a lot. They’d paid for music.
Four minutes 33
was barely long enough to show
just who this space belonged to.
 

Jan Bay-Petersen

published in Stand 19:1, 2021

 
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