Photograph by Brian Fraser
Green Bee-eater
More precious than all
the gems of Jaipur –
the green bee-eater.
If you see one singing
tree-tree-tree
with his space-black bill
and rufous cap,
his robes
all shades of emerald
like treetops glimpsed
from a plane,
his blue cheeks,
black eye-mask
and the delicate tail streamer
like a plume of smoke –
you might dream
of the forests
that once clothed
our flying planet.
And perhaps his singing
is a spell
to call our forests back –
tree
by tree
by tree.
Pascale’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl, published by Bloodaxe in 2020, won an RSL Literature Matters Award while in progress. Her seventh collection Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the Royal Society of Literature’s 2018 Ondaatje Prize. Four of Pascale’s earlier collections were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2018 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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