Bubo

 smoke becomes ice

clawing in the dark underneath

it’s time to hunt again

eye open in a cone of light

test the one-two of my rise

my tilt and strike

thunder flexing from my mantle

fall silent onto wingbeat

draw talons into softness

the ice is falling through me

find the river of the air

search under the white eye

lose the grass dance hiss

lose wing flap moving water

lose drums of warming blood

everything but timeless night

stillness hanging 

crucified against the Milky Way

hanging the noose of the moon

over great balls of the harvest

the gleam of my sniper sight

tunes the teeming field

the slap and sorrow of their feet

a lame individual

pushing down on diamond arrowheads

through the eggshell of his bone

the yolk of his ruined brain

standing on a new nothing

pulling the world apart

ice becomes smoke

the ice of thirty million years

on the hypersurface of the present.

He was born to be killed here.