Fierce Love
To be a lyre bird, dove…or pigeon:
strong-clawed and sleek-feathered.
To write songs of flight in italics
against grey skies, and dig out
the worms that dirt hides. To carry dawn
home in my silky down, spread light
across fields and town, then balance
stillness in the winter’s stark trees.
To know heights higher than the highest
branch, grip the hardest edge of ice
and graze the skins of frozen lakes.
To see small breaths slowly melt
even landlocked limbs. For his touch
to ruffle my night face now, softly
as a snowy owl, with the dark eyes
of a falcon: fierce, starless and deep
enough to drown my fears.
Sarah James is a poet, fiction writer and journalist. A narrative in poems, The Magnetic Diaries, is published by KFS and a collection, plenty-fish, with Nine Arches Press this summer. Her début collection, Into the Yell, won third prize in the multi-genre International Rubery Book Awards 2011. www.sarah-james.co.uk
First published in The Magnetic Diaries, Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015