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Dave Garbutt
© Brigitta Hänggi
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the poet
Dave Garbutt is retired, lives in Switzerland and has been a keen birder since he was 12. He was born in North London, less than a mile from Keats’ House, and began his writing career while still at school. Recent publications to include Dave's poems range from Deronda Review and The Brown Envelope Book to BOLD! (an anthology on masculinity) and Sound and Vision. His poem Thirteen White Birds was shown at Leigh Spinners Mill in April 2023 as part of the Paper Birds exhibition. Dave's poem ripped was long-listed in The Rialto's Nature and Place 2021 competition.
the poems
Walk, Stand and Sit
by the Hornbeam
Come with me
into the moment
the world relaxes
We talk, chatting, gesticulating, not drowning.
Here, the hornbeam catkins are out—
wait. Stand. Sit.
Still.
Breathe.
Watch.
—Count six hundred heartbeats—
A Great Tit calls, moves past, twig to twig
it stops to sing—
a bit early, but sunshine makes it right.
Now more birds move, quiz twigs,
parse branches, a Tree-creeper sings,
a Dunnock from the hedge
releases its ‘short unassuming warble’
my first for this woody place.
Four Magpies swoop past.
A Nuthatch hammers a hazelnut
A Hawfinch sits and watches
drops to the ground ...
here is the world when humans are still—
this world, without us, is the one we live in
best.
Water Vole
The first time I saw a water vole
it didn’t see me,
and I watched it for half an hour.
I had time. I was running away
from the last quarrel of
my marriage,
from the last quarrel of my life,
into my last sunset.
And this tiny whisker-twitcher, tiny
grass chopper, reed wrecker,
ate, looked, sniffed,
groomed itself, sniffed, rested
watched for sky-scares,
watched for water-shrieks
and for a few seconds
slept.
Then it slipped off its rest place, and swam,
leaving me with a life
still to come,
and a future yet to happen.
Magnol.i.am
Although I am but one cell budding into a line
I am just as much a petal
although I am spread, to wind & sun
I am just as much a petal
although I am creased, folded back by frost
I am just as much a petal
although there are bruises marking my satin white
I am just as much a petal
although I rest now, released, on the ground
I am just as much a petal
although a footprint crosses my silvery tongue
I am just as much a petal
although time pushes the bruises to cover me
I am just as much a petal
although I am dissolving to moss and leaf
I am just as much a petal
and tell me human with eyes and ears and hands and pen
how about you? are you a petal now?
or still a human? Since when
are you both?
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
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