fallslikesnow

The bird skims across the water like a skipping stone Pursued by a snarl shaped like a fox.

The meadow, blades of grass A landscape of soil, ripe and scalloped by the rain Steamy loam ready to take to a different kind of nest Suddenly a wall of feathers descends Huge and brown, iridescent, each brown drab feather Somehow rippling deeply with colour A light bomb exploding with colour like a tropical sunset The wing scrapes overhead and is gone

The evidence of age, the skimming black dots In the land of screaming birds each dot is a bird with Wings sewn together over its back, eyes pierced with Needles, legs broken in multiple places They fall forever Each a Lapwing who lost her nest

In the land of screaming birds space is only direction, not distance Time is stretched to an endless glowing moment There are no clouds, just a blue mist Overlain with the patina of infinity That mortal eyes never see The delicate white crackling, the evidence of vast age Black dots skim across

Against a sky that looks as though The blue were matte paint Hastily slapped on the heavens The Lapwing cuts lines and curves, Tying the sky together with grace.

To be the first to fly across the field of broken bones And see the roadway of shards the dead will walk upon To fly across, along, up

We will summon all of our resources And those of our allies Spy satellites the size of pickups Will gently rotate and re-focus Ballistic, sub-orbital Spy planes will fly overhead taking 10,000 pictures a second Glittering machines The size and shape of spiders Will skitter through the hedgerow Looking for the nest