The Cock's Nest by Norman Nicholson

The Cock's Nest

The spring my father died - it was winter, really,

February fill-grave, but March was in

Before we felt the bruise of it and knew

How empty the rooms were - that spring

A wren flew to our yard, over Walter Willson's

Warehouse roof and the girls' school playground

For raising dockens and cats. It found a niche

Tucked behind the pipe of the bathroom outflow,

Caged in a wickerwork of creeper; then

Began to build:

Three times a minute, hour after hour,

Backward and forward to the backyard wall,

Nipping off nebfulls of the soot-spored moss

Rooted between the bricks. In a few days

The nest was finished. They say the cock

Leases an option of sites and leaves the hen 

To choose which nest she will. She didn't choose our yard.

And as March gambolled out, the fat King-Alfred sun

Blared down too early from its tinny trumpet

On new-dug potato-beds, the still bare creeper,

The cock's nest with never an egg in,

And my father dead.