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Roselle Angwin

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Moon wood

after Franck André Jamme, Bois de Lune

They say that you come here
from time to time, bird on fist
you come and you wait

unlike the bird, quickening
as it does to impatience,
to the impulsion of flight

frantic scrabbling to freedom
smell of space permeating leather
and you loosen the jesses

and it’s gone

and the forest for one brief moment
sparking to long flame, shimmering

it kills, that’s the truth:
you know it in the boon
laid at your feet, whimpering still
but gone with the long flames

you are blind; your hunting
merely a gathering

you have no memory
of the bird’s airborne flutter
nor of the drawn bow of its flight

and all this because
it is within you

it is within you

you are the moon’s long arc
cleaving the sky
the light in the hawk’s eye
the white cry of the prey

you are the shining
the scream

you may not yet know where
but all of this
happens within

 

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