Garden visitor
No black or spotted beast, half-glimpsed on moorland
or slinking out of focus through dusk-encrypted birches;
no blinding flash, no skimming light-source,
or anything else of the third kind—
but you, vast, taller than the trees in my garden,
hovering among them just above the ground,
your feet hinted at
under tidal cream-white robes, moving
though there’s no breath to disturb September leaves,
no petal unhoused by your arrival.
I know what you are. I recognize
your upward-pointed wings, Botticelli hair,
the deep eyes that look down at me,
or through me, or both — who knows what your kind see?
We see each other, you and I, through some thinness
where universes almost collide.
What is your message?
Beings like you always have a message.
That is your purpose. Say what you have to say.
Shout, sing, clang, blare, announce.
But there is no announcement, only a thickening
of the air, a kind of roaring in my ears,
a sound like lions’ wings, if lions had wings.
And you’re gone.
Probably, they’ll say, a blade of evening sunlight,
flashing from under the clouds, blinded me for a moment.
But I saw you. I saw what I needed to see.
What my wilder heart was missing.
Fugue
A hundred on the speedometer, as fast as I dare go.
Inside me, beating against my ribs,
the speed of dream or nightmare, of speed itself,
headlong flight from the terrible light
rising behind me, flowering like a wildfire.
I am leaving behind all I loved,
all gentleness and quiet, all my people.
Things have gone beyond hope
of restoration or remorse.
A bird crashes against the windscreen,
maybe the last bird on earth maybe
the last bird ever.
I do not know what kind of bird.
I am alone here, there is no other life
on this tarmac streel crevassing a burnt plain.
We are all to blame.
A dead bird, and no other creature ahead of me,
and the white fire following
Flight of the dragonfly 