It carries on the wind like a deep-throated crow,
presses silence away from the spire and cottages,
weaving between morning’s hawthorn and trees
as I sit here on a fallen birch. Icicles sway
on the firs. A hundred colours of sky
spill through glassy prisms, decorate this eiderdown
of snow beneath my feet. As each light reflects
another bird searches the woods.
.......................................................He has sent them,
released their coiled wings from a cage
of fingers. Little black swells that grow
the closer they come. This man in his tower, pulling firm
on the ropes, is masterful-- cracking sky like a pale
blue shell, pushing his shackle of beaks through.
Their caws will find me. Rough twines of string
under his hands are estuaries I reveal
as I brush the frosted bark. This tangle of rivers,
aged and earthy, leads back to him. I taste them
in the air like the bread he broke on my tongue--
dry and clean, as villagers lit a bonfire
in the Square. I heard them singing
as we spoke in the annexe. I told him the wax
on the candle was me-- each time he burned
the wick, my blood coursed the sides, over his table.
He drew warmth into a hungry mouth, tried to catch
the perfumed curl of smoke leaving him
and pinched out the flame. I remember his body
moving across floorboards to find me, the same way
he searches now-- desperate and wanting. He calls
through this stillness of winter, but I will not go.
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