Shearwater North Col
Each stray reminder of your home life
is hung on the wind that pulls away from you
as the walls of the mountains in the cold light
glow red, in an echo of the flares on high
in the vault of the night
In the forest on the branches and the clotheslines
a fierce little wren singing loud, and high
while his eyes, insisting on their own life,
gave legs to the lie
that there was world, and time
to grow old in its light
In the last of embers of the twilight,
the gunmetal air has come alive with birds.
They burst from the clouds above the snow line
and bloom in the ashes of the old, black sky,
and go back to the night.
