White on white. Silent flight and silent fall. Warm blood, cold land. Slow arch-winged flight across the marsh: then a pause for thought. On one of his hunting-perches, looking around with a cold expressionless expression. Heart-shaped face just a little bit like a skull. Flakes falling all around but not disturbing for a second the seriousness of his dusk run.
A sight to make me pause as I mucked out the stables; a sight to make me wish I was a poet, the sort that could give a single word the weight of thousands. But the world is safe: I stopped writing poetry before I even stopped being a student, one of the wiser decisions of those years.
A couple of days earlier Cindy found a barn owl pellet in – well, the barn of all places, it seems the owl is as prone to cliché as I was when I was a poet. She has clever hands and so she tweezered it apart, to Eddie’s enthralment, creating a shrews’ ossuary: featherweight femurs, ribs like hairs, jaws of minute effectiveness.
The Hawk and Owl Trust – excellent people – put up a barn owl box in the lower meadow, so when I see a barn owl floating about I send it a radio message: des res, available rent-free to any deserving bird. The local barn owls took a hammering a couple of winters back: I’ve been willing them to regroup and move in.
There’s a new meaning to look for in the nature-poetry of the 21st century. We need a poetry based around scarcity, our awareness of extinction, our need to put things right for the sake of the planet, for the sake of our future of a species, for the sake of our souls and the souls of our great grandchildren. And perhaps above all for the sake of the animals themselves: a matter summed up for me in that brief epiphany as a white bird in a white land.
We need a nature-poet as good as Ted Hughes, as good as Gerard Manley Hopkins, as good as John Clare, to celebrate not just nature but nature’s conservation. Please tell me if you know who can fill the gap. And I heard a bird calling from the barn owl-box just the other morning.
It was a stock dove.
craftyclara says
20 January 2015 at 7:51 pmYou needn’t worry about the lack of nature poets sir, you do a damn fine job yourself! Many thanks.
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:41 pmThanks for the kind words, i’m not exactly T.S Elliot, but I love the flattery!
Michael John Clark says
7 February 2015 at 10:59 amBut he’s fighting in the Captain’s Tower with Ezra Pound so we need your words !
Simon Barnes says
13 February 2015 at 1:31 pmPerhaps we should all line up with the calypso singers then…
lizsutton26 says
20 January 2015 at 8:22 pmSimon you are a poet, dammit!
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:41 pmAs said before, i’m not T.S Elliot though am I?
Judy Dixey says
20 January 2015 at 9:32 pmthank you, so evocative
Pat Leighton, Barrow Gurney, North Somerset says
20 January 2015 at 10:37 pmYes indeed, it conjures up a wonderful atmosphere. Have missed your Saturday columns…..
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:42 pmThanks for kind words, i’m still plugging away here.
Michael John Clark says
7 February 2015 at 10:52 amAbsolutely Pat
Martyn Whiteman says
21 January 2015 at 7:51 am…….that was poetry
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:42 pmAw shucks!
Michael John Clark says
21 January 2015 at 9:33 amAs always, you articulate so well and so beautifully as you did in your article on Mull in Nature’s Home magazine. Stopped reading the Times in protest at them removing your reporting. Please keep writing, you give us a voice. Thankyou
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:42 pmThanks for encouragement, i’ll do my best!
Beverley says
21 January 2015 at 10:54 amBeautifully written. You do have the heart of a poet.
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:43 pmAlas, not the words! But thanks anyway.
Chris Nolan says
21 January 2015 at 2:16 pmWe put up a woodpecker’s box. Hammering all around but not on our box.
I do miss your writing for The Times, but thanks for the chance to still read you online.
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:43 pmBest luck with your woodpeckers this spring.
vivien raine says
31 January 2015 at 11:37 amUnfortunately, I have never seen an owl on its evening run, but thanks for this, which is somehow much better than a photograph, or video, because you make me ‘feel’ the moment!
Simon Barnes says
6 February 2015 at 2:52 pmPerhaps a word is worth a thousand pictures then. Thanks for your very kind ones.
Michael John Clark says
7 February 2015 at 10:56 amExactly, Vivienne, so heartening to hear from like minded people, all down to Mr Barnes