Cranes are tall, graceful birds
with long necks, long legs and?greyish plumage.

The common crane lives in the
north and east of Europe.

All that summer,?Sunday mornings,?we lay in bed?watching?the dockland dawn?remake our love.

Rising shy and wary,
high above sheds,
warehouses, chimneys:
two cantilever pillars,?a lesson in physics –
gravity’s twist;
hearts lurch. We fly.?Geometry degrees:
acute, isosceles, obtuse,
angles forming ?knee to knee -?two bodies met,
welded, slowly
tessellated.?Above all
a course in navigation,
reaching, cresting,
tsunami up
then down –
deep steel together
anchored.

Steeve, Davit, Derrick, Kroll,

hoist, pulley, winch, axis

stacker, tower, crawler, gantry

jib, boom, tackle, tie

slew, drag, wind, load

Australian cranes are known as
‘native companions’ and perform
remarkable, intricate dances.

Sarus cranes pair for life and
if one bird dies, the other is
said to die of a broken heart.

Those polished structures
signed the gauzy,
watery light,
ignis fatuus,
they seeded and defined
the morning cloud,
chiaroscuro,
fretwork, trellis, filigree
poised so?like ballerinas,
plié, pointu, arabesque,?like us?that summer.
June, July, August

September came.
Cranes, love-?birds went.