Alan Peat

Napoleon’s Clutch

The wind’s lashes came mascara thickened, rattling the corrugated hen-house roof. Those birds laid clockwork eggs; eyes closed I can still see their butter-yellow yolks. That night the gale ripped their roof off, took it for a run to the low field where it rested. 

They could have flown the coop, winged it all the way to the border. But instead they came to a confused halt less than a barn’s length away down the track. Some were pecking at the dirt; others just fluttered and fluffed up their wings.

home bird
same seaside town every year
for a week —
from The Bay View lounge window
a carpark full of gulls

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About the Author

Alan Peat is a UK-based poet and author. He was runner-up in the 2021 British Haiku Society’s Ken and Norah Jones Haibun Award and in 2022 won a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. His book of collaborative ekphrastic haibun with Réka Nytrai, Barking at the Coming Rain (Alba Publishing, 2023), is available by e-mailing alanpeat@icloud.com.

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