EXETER-BASED Lawrence Sail has published six volumes of poetry with Bloodaxe Books and, among other distinctions, has directed the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.

This charming piece closes his new collection, The Quick (£9.95).

WREN

(for Penelope Lively)

Petite farthing-bird, a single wren

Endowed your garden with song as we sat there,

Notes which lasted no more than minutes, if

Even that. Yet somehow they stay

Lodged in the neural branchwork, emblems

Of every shard of detail that translates

Past back to present, remaking from the faintest

Echo the whole shape of utterance -

Like Aesop's wren which, though not itself

Inured to altitude, still achieved

Virtuoso soaring by climbing aboard the

Eagle's broad back, and in no time was

Lifted high on the shifting thermals,

Yoked to the wonder of the widening view.