Those Voices (Poetry)

To bed in summertime, the warm evening long
and light — the air busy with a blackbird’s glad song
while out in the garden the grown-ups still chat
think their children asleep so discuss this and that

There are odd scraps of gossip drift up from below
and some kids hear much more than their mums and dads know
just snatches of meaning — a low string of words
all mixed in with the twittering notes of that bird’s

It soothes like a lullaby this prelude to sleep
the season’s best concert the memory will keep
repeating when children since grown and turned grey
listen out for those voices as time slips away