Gall
On the dog-rose a robin's pincushion
is Christmas crimson, the pupal gall wasps
hunkered down to overwinter,
each in its own mossy cell.
So many this year.
*****
Entertaining Strangers at Christmas
Two fieldfares in their winter waistcoats
alight among the pig-nose apples,
the fruit still clinging to leaf-bare trees,
gleaming like blood-red and golden baubles.
The birds are welcome at our table. We bid them feed.
Stephen Boyce lives in north Dorset. He is the author of three poetry collections, Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010), The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014) and The Blue Tree (Indigo Dreams 2019), and of three poetry pamphlets. Stephen is co-founder of Winchester Poetry Festival. You can find him here: www.stephenboycepoetry.com.