Untitled 1

The hawk that shears the hedge then steadies, held
above the verge by urgent need, he is
old Egypt's silhouette, the hieroglyph
for 'kill'. There is a lock to which he is
contiunually the key that must release
a narrow death from everywhere in air.
He is the tender axe that has to fall.

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The russet Chinese dragon, smaller than
a forearm, undulating over lanes
of traffic (faceless, more a bell-pull than
a creature) that I realised, soon as
I'd driven past the point where it dived back
into grass, had to be a weasel with
a baby rabbit in its hidden jaws.

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The fox that ran across the road before my car
just outside Haydon Bridge, that headlights and
the darkness bleached to fine sand coursing through
an hourglass neck, contracted into dash
and then dispersed into a hemisphere
of fields. I had to thank chance for its choice
of my space in the convoy's crush of wheels.