Nightjar

‘Du hast einen Vogel.’
German. Literally: ‘You have a bird.’
Figuratively: ‘You’re mad.’

What thing entered just now, its dive-knife head

quite sailing through the rucked sail of my ear? Jeer,

kettle. Ignite, would you, hob. Jingle or clack, spice rack.

My mouth is suddenly all moth – mind rigged and jigged,

that this torn urge, this tonnage, this project find me,

with a jink not a knock, jolt not a surge, siege or segue,

and then disappear again in a curtain-jog,

returning – or rather turning – to its nest. Little highjacker

charting junctures, you knot-chord of discord

earthing jaggedness, you whiskered nixer and jinx

thrawing Juniper Pug and Gem, I have you.

At last I have you.

Commentary:

‘Nightjar’ was originally written for the third Birdbook anthology. As commissioning editors and compilers of this series, Kirsten Irving and I permitted ourselves one poem per book, newly composed and looked over by the other. From the volume themed around moorland and heathland I reserved the nightjar – a species which nests on the ground, camouflaged. I set about hiding the word ‘nightjar’ inside the poem in as many ways as I could think of: anagrams, acrostics, similes, and so on.

The gestation period for the project was so long that I had time to enter ‘Nightjar’ into the annual Poetry London competition before it was published. It won first prize, and I was invited to read it at a launch event at London Zoo, near the emu enclosure.

Juniper Pug and Gem are species of moth (the main diet of nightjars), and ‘thrawing’ is a Scots word that means to twist or turn a thing on itself.