Michael Bullock
Hand and Hawk
A wide plain, stretches of water, clusters of reeds, clumps of willows dangling their branches in the pools. Overhead two butterflies fluttering and darting to and fro.
From one of the pools a hand rises. The fingers open and close, grasping for something that is not there. The butterflies fly around the hand, so fast as to create the appearance of a halo. The hand closes, leaving only the forefinger pointing upward.
At the spot in the sky to which the finger points a hawk is circling. It plummets to earth, passes through the halo formed by the butterflies, seizes the pointing finger in its beak, drags the hand from the water and flies with it into the sky.
At the zenith of its flight, the hawk releases the hand, which drops to the earth, spinning as it falls, all the fingers outspread.
Landing on a patch of grass, the hand scuttles crablike to the nearest pool and disappears into the depths
The butterflies, now three in number. whirl away, still spinning like a diaphanous wheel,and vanish among the trees and reeds.
The wide plain undulates as though very gently breathing.
Page(s) 88
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