Caroline Maldonado
No Dominion
Le Marche, Italy
Regular as Avenale’s church bells
the buzzards’ midday cry.
Sometimes there’s a pair, today just one
high against the depths of cloud and
blue, his dark-gold five-foot wing-span
spread, wing-tip feathers
flexed, shivering against the air.
No small birds’ flapping, no whirr of doves, silent now
he circles the valley. Below him cotta rooftops, gorse –
globules of sunlight – and cloud
shadows running like rivers down the hillsides.
He sees all. Tilt and glide, he turns
imperceptibly, so slow he seems almost
not to move. What
grace, what dominion! You wonder
– is there something to learn
from him?
But watch this! Out of an empty sky
a crow sheers up, wheels and
dives, while the buzzard keeps on
circling and flexing wing-tips. The
dark bird veers and charges
again and again until
the buzzard changes course, circling still but over that
hill, not this one and the crow
is departing and its mate
is slanting up across woods
(you cannot see their nest in the crook of the branch)
to chase the golden bird
tilting into the horizon.
Page(s) 42
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The