6 APRIL 1996, Page 32

Gifts

Blue-yellow day. Some fluttery thing was trapped In the glassed-in patio, a swallow Drum-thumping and riffling among vine-leaves And geraniums, one of those dark dots Whose clouds I'd often seen swirling around the house, settling Magnetically on a telephone wire.

Now, within arm's reach, the short back and tuning-fork tail Were a sleek petroleum blue, ringed By a throb of gorsefire: exhausted, the tiny beak opening Like a split thorn. I closed in carefully Till my hands cupped it — featherweight — and the gift I could give By just throwing them open: sky Flapping its windscape out of a back garden.

Mark Granier