One hundred ghosts in the loft extension

An amnesia of housemartins
decorate the rafters with busy suggestion,
the flit of tiny bones
that only ears understand.

The attic had been kept akimbo
with a skeleton of scaffold;
they took a sledgehammer
to the antique beam

that was pretending to keep the sky out.
The soft rent of a hobbled spine.
A seizure of wings in the wall space.
They leaked like chimney smoke.

You mention the rot, the sag,
the smell of spores,
the risk of floor and roof
coming together like lovers.

The new bay windows do their best
to forget: the spry memory of a hundred birds,
single minded. Cats all across the county
were coming home with gifts.

Such fierce intention will not disperse like heat
through single glazing. It's a spare room now,
guests wake up early with a migraine nesting
behind one eye and ears full of unlikely bones.