Moray McGowan is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Poetry Contest

The waxwings that stripped our cherry tree’s last crop
dropped guano’d stones in meadows far beyond the sea
From the felled tree’s straight and amber grain
we carved our firstborn’s crib
From glasses perched upon the stump
we toasted her first school day
We watched her curl up in her fairy dell
the roots left as they rotted back into earth,
watched her teach her sisters reading and the facts of life
she’d learned from books, her gaze on our disasters
and her own first joys, her own first scars

They’re all flown now, the daughters,
new-nested far beyond the sea
But last spring, after years, the high-grown hedge
rang with birdy boasting: waxwings returned
to jostle for the best branch and the best match

And now, in yet another spring,
in the hedge’s shelter, tiny trees,
sprung from guano’d cherrystones,
unfurl green fists to greet the turning world

Moray McGowan, a Hiberno-Scottish silverback, wrapped chocolate, delivered mail, dug trenches, picked fruit and baked boiler insulation, and taught for forty years at universities in Germany, the UK and Ireland, retiring as Professor of German (1776) at Trinity College, Dublin in 2015. He now shuffles between the marshlands of Somerset, UK, and the jungles of Berlin. His recent writing has appeared e.g. in/on Plum Tree Tavern, Pulsebeat, Rue Scribe and Wildfire Words, and won prizes and commendations e.g. from Artemesia Poetry and the Cathalbui Poetry competition.