A peripheral black scuttle –
Shot lengthways with grey-white –
Flashes like low sun
Through contorted old oaks;
A mere moving shadow
Obliquely referenced in my
Side eye –
Juvenile Brocks, from
A family sett fair
Under the newish coppice –
Birch and bramble
Rose and thorn.
One lies now
Resting, verge-ways; must’v
Rushed without looking
On a rural reconnoitre;
Stepped out; under some truck,
Some tractor or trailer…
Now, we, his killers
Pilot our fat-tyred weapons
Around that tarmac shrine –
Hoping that the thick-skinned
Or thick-headed will move him
On.

I too, approached
The Mausoleum
With sombre reverence.
But, out from the carcass –
Out from fleshy tendrils,
From detached leg and ruddy sinew –
Surged up, on muscled, languid waves
A flare of cream-tinged orange;
Finger-tipped wings one clue,
The other how it drifted vertically
As if high on heady helium –
A Kite, young too, but buzzing
With aerial electricity.
One beat, two beats, and
Away, low, then fast-rising,
Disturbed, mid-feast,
But eddying back to take
More spoils out of the strong
Comes forth might;
Landing again, in
My rear view mirror.