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Catherine Smith

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Kingfisher

You split the frozen water with your boot,
disturbed the neat shuttlecock of green and blue
breasting the black. Under the mercury sky

the question quivered between us. Did it freeze
down there, excited by a flicker of fish,
had it pierced the splintered surface, been sucked

into the stiffening stream? You toed it over
and the chestnut-bellied fact of it, the blue
and lucent green of loss smashed home

like the icy shock of drowning. I remembered
when we feathered ourselves up for love.
Today we met in drabber colours, talked clean,

churned fresh mud. It did not change
the freckles on your belly, the piston of your throat,
the way you unpeeled fruit. The sky tore

and peppered us with freezing rain. We sheltered,
sucking our fingertips back to life, not looking
at the flash of iridescence at our feet.

 

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