The Peregrine

by J.A. Baker

Spring dusk; Creak of bats’ wings Over the steel river, Curlew-call Of the lemuring owls. Or this paragraph: A wrought-iron starkness of leafless trees Stands sharply up along the valley skyline. The cold north air, like a lens of ice, Transforms and clarifies. Wet plough lands are dark as malt, Stubbles are bearded with weeds And sodden with water. Gales have taken the last of the leaves. Autumn is thrown down. Winter stands.

Poetryy

And for the watcher, sheltered for centuries from such hunger and such rage, such agony and such fear, there is the memory of that sabring fall from the sky, and the vicarious joy of the guiltless hunter who kills only through his familiar, and wills him to be fed.

Perrgrine stoop

No other book – save perhaps Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, which stands as The Peregrine’s golden

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