Nostos Poem by Michael Buhagiar

The birds sit ranged along the tree’s high limb
As day slips back into thickening dark,
Their twig toes gripping the still warm bark,
And massed cries wailing in ecstatic hymn.

Should the storm god louring from rim to rim
Shower his drenching midnight cark,
The leaves would remain their sheltering ark,
Or walls against the tempest’s savage whim.

The watcher is those havened birds somehow;
And someone else that rooted nest,
Someone warm out of long ago
Who nursed him next a swollen breast,
And, with fall of hair, to a singing slow,
Rocked as fire burned low in the west.