Poetry on Grey Squirrels ebook!

And all was for a cherry         Keith Chandler

One day green beads
beneath the leaves began to colour up.
Within minutes arrived
grey hordes, wolf shadows, a flying squad.
Starting at the top where no ladder
or thrown stick could see them off,
they squatted, tail over shoulder
like a college scarf, as if to exercise
some ancient right to scoff the lot.

Winter had found them amusing enough –
swimming from branch to branch
tail following behind, a double bounce.
Or hung claw-footed upside down
to get at the feeders, ‘squirrel-proof’.
Or, stage misers,
jinking from hidden cache to cache,
their mind a maze of dot-to-dots.
But this…this was too much.

Tree rats the neighbour called them
arriving with his gun.
Pop pop pop. Business soon done.
But thanking him I felt rotten –
seeing close up how russet reds
bordered the grey, the bellies white,
tail fur bristled with coppery light…
Chucked on the shed roof
for buzzards to find.

And that cherry crop we’d ‘saved’?
Of the branches
low enough to pick, I had,
mouth bearded with juice, more than enough,
the rest let drop, a festering mush.
Come winter, as if to punish us
with a lack of grace notes, leaps and runs,
all music of the trees rubbed out,
we waited, but they didn’t come back.