Snipe and curlew, the avocet
on a river dimpling
under rain,
the dunnock chating in the ivy.
So a man travels
on a dull train,
through cooling Friday towns,

night settling
around them.
Red kites above
this Chiltern village
see a rabbit carried
from the summerhouse
and are known

to flex and buckle
stillness on the breeze
to swoop.
The man above the woman,
watching her smile,
the hair sweated
over her forehead.

Copyright Ian Pople 2022, by kind permission of Carcanet Press Ltd. Ian Pople was born in Ipswich and educated at the British Council, Athens and the Universities of Aston and Manchester. He has taught English at secondary level and in higher education in Sudan, Greece, Saudi Arabia and the UK universities of Salford and Manchester.

His first collection of poetry, The Glass Enclosure (Arc, 1996), won a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1997.“Kites” is from his latest collection: Spillway: New and Collected Poems, out in June