Colin Carberry (Canada/Ireland)

Reading Michael Lee Rattigan’s on a secluded bench in the stillness of Toronto's High Park, I found myself instantly drawn in by these sharply focused untitled lyric pieces that celebrate the delightful and darkly unpredictable aspects of sun, wind, water, light, birds and bird-nests in a deeply sympathetic but unsentimental way. Striking a chord somewhere between the tightness of the haiku and the down-to-earth but stringent 'steel-pen exactness' of the early Irish nature lyric, these focused free verse fragments reflect the spontaneous, quietly elating scene of feathered species from either side of the Atlantic (crow, sparrow, pigeon, gull) as well as those indigenous to England and the countryside of Rattigan’s own Surrey (thrush, bittern, ruff, magpie), along with the wind and running water going about their daily business.

And – if we pause for a moment in that fully alert trance-calm from which Rattigan's poem fragments emerge seemingly fully formed, a voice like “a drain loosed/in small flow” may lead us to the quiet wisdom of “small things/hold the soul” – a secreted knowledge that goes closer to the heart of the serene old couple feeding bread to the ducks by Grenadier Pond, than the keep-fit fanatics who tear through the park breathlessly spewing their loud complaints without so much as a passing glance at the perfectly healthy unruffled wild world at their feet.

I am tempted to trip those toxic joggers and hand them a copy of Rattigan’s collection upon recovery, because in these closely observed intimate sketches of nature’s quietly unnoticed, little half-tucked away mysteries – the ecstatic chirrup of a starling at dawn, the sight of a sparrow seemingly shedding its shadow, the mysterious aspect of the mist-hazed sun at dawn – a glimpse of our own mystery is opened to us.