Out there somewhere is a blackcap. Perhaps

we scared it off the way we clap each evening.

I tend to think we deserve something like that

delightful fluting since we have been in our flats for weeks,

staring out at the trees, not flouting the rules, not going

on outings round the block, watching and worrying,

as we try to work out what the world will be like.

I have my binoculars to hand should he start up from down

in the empty park, but I think he might be an early morning

bird, already bored with singing by the time the man

at the newspaper kiosk arrives to lower his awnings

and the yawning dog owners appear with plastic

poo bags and, if they have remembered, dogs.

The barking is the forgotten ones, at windows.

The acacias have come into bloom and are now

almost out of it, the flowers saddening with each

day, those that survived the wood pigeon feeding

frenzy, which was only halted temporarily

by a male magpie intent on creating an exclusion zone

around the the site of its nest, his best

not good enough to stop the bloomfest.

Soon we shall be clapping, drowning the

singing of the blackbird with a lot to say.