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)