For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit
The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm.
You – indelicate gobber
all gape and gum-pink
circled in the beach white
like a mouth stuck in wonder. O
spit-shrieker
coming back for yourself,
tearing fur so diligently,
never rushing the thistle of this nest
to be before it’s ready.
World is all precipice
and feather is nothing but needle.
I know it –
the need not to be seen
unblended in stark-light.
How it is the air not the earth
that scares us
by making us
so apparent.
You will wrestle yourself out –
body forth in sharp clatter.
Straight as a pine.
Clean as a punch.
Coming for the ground
with both eyes fixed.
Coming in sleet,
to churn the turf
to thunder.
May they never see you coming.
Survival is just a well placed fall
that nobody can outrun.
Alice O‘Malley-Woods is a poet and researcher based in Lewes, East Sussex. Her work explores themes of loss, ecogrief, and disability. She is the winner of the Black Cat Nature Writing Prize, 2024, and first runner up in the NAWG poetry prize 2016. She is currently completing a PhD in neuroqueer ecopoetics at Brighton University.