Poem of the week: Search by Christine Marendon

A sequence of sharply visual impressions animates a wild animal’s darting mind as it comes upon a hunter – and meets its fate

Search

Bowls of milk in the rain. A rabbit’s wet head.
Here’s someone walking through meadows with rolled-up
trousers. Owl pellets. Banks of fog. Hillsides.
Cranes in flattened grass. Dripping cloths.
A look. Here’s my mouth in the reeds. And there.
My breath on the lake. One breaking wave and I’m
no longer I. The place. The roof-tiles. The day,
forgotten. There at the edge. Where the darkness
lives. There in the valley. The gate at the end.
Wooden boots, a mirror of water between lips. Silent.
Come the flood, the stones sink. A handful of forest.
And a blow. The impact of a word. White bird,
white feather. You. Quivering fish. Scurrying fox.

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