On Wimbledon Common

A fine clear dazzling morning
           as I stroll out
the sun scarcely an hour high
           the air just tart enough
How my whole day is shaped
           by the song of that meadow lark
perched on a fence-stake
           twenty yards away!

Two or three liquid-simple notes
           repeated at intervals
full of careless happiness
           and hope

With its peculiar shimmering
           slow progress and swift
noiseless action of its wings
           away it flies
alights on another stake
           and so on to another
shimmering and singing
           as it goes

John Lyons

(adapted from Walt Whitman, Specimen Days)