Hunched, intent, you
watch small fish
swim,
elusive. The whole world
compacts
to your
funneling gaze.
How swift your dive is –
slammed – shuttlecock sure.
One dip and you
emerge,
bandying your dagger about
on the fence, then that
sword-swallower
tilt of your
feeding head.
In flight, your blue wings
burn against
bleached sky.
Incendiary indigoes!
You settle on a telephone wire, a
strung sapphire
shining, but
duty calls you back to the pinpricked
dough of a
bank
scored with burrows.
You push through
rank passages
to your
plague of pink nestlings,
your fumbling,
blind
children.
STEPHANIE MAYNE
Auckland, NZ
