This week’s poem, devoted to the giant birds which live their busy lives above the streets of Kampala, living, breeding and dying on the treetops.

Marabou, the Late.

You’ve ended on a pavement, surrounded by a scattering of guano white sticks,

Not twigs, you’re too substantial for those. Branches rather, and feathers, grey fluff, smelly bits of stuff.

The nest has fallen. Here, some hours ago you must have beaten your last wing strokes.

Motionless now, a black and white umbrella dragged backwards through a storm.

Your beak neatly closed, but wings and legs spread untidy, with far too many joints,

And those unexplained pimply, fuzzed pink bits around your neck and head.

Perhaps you’d reached your wingspan-lifespan?

On the flat treetop above life goes on. Adolescent chicks strut their fluff. Bickering,

Bill-rattling. A family colony, stretching, fetching, carrying. Busy with big, little things of city life.

Massive wings are stretched above the highest nest, each feather shaped and shiny as a blade,

Bald-head thrown back, bill rattles sabre-like. Then folded back, head nodding undertaker-style.

Was he the one who made you take the fall?

Below, on shit-speckled pavement, other city inhabitants step delicately past your funeral pyre,

Glance up at the usually invisible. Life on another level.

Kampala, 2018