|
Doctrine
Because the kestrel knows hunger as flight,
as the thin edge of wind along her wingbones,
as the purest arc of gravity bent to a body’s will,
she perches on the last unbroken fencepost,
a needle threading sky to earth,
her vision stitched to every quiver below.
Because the shrew does not know divinity,
only the warm dark of roots,
the shifting map of burrow and seed,
the delicate hieroglyphs of its own kind
pressed into the dirt—
it does not know the doctrine of ascent,
how one stroke of wings
can break the laws of hiding.
Because the kestrel’s creed is the plunge,
the pauseless covenant of talon to spine,
she drops—a streak of ochre,
a spear of feather and fate—
and what was hidden
becomes, for an instant, illuminated.
Because no prayer in the kingdom of hunger
is ever left unanswered,
because the body must fill
or falter,
because the world is written
in the language of collision—
the kestrel takes what was given.
And the shrew, body vanishing into sky,
becomes, at last, a brief, sacred flight. |
|
