High, round, safe, a place to rest. Like the nest, still warm
in my mind. I settle. Suddenly - darkness devours me.

Falling, I try to stall and fly up but my wings grow heavy
with dust of night - they cramp and panic. My claws scratch

wildly but catch on nothing. I land soft in a cloud of white.
Strike for the light but my head hits hardness. Something’s

not right, not right with the air. Tap my beak on it - how
can that be? My heart pounds inside my breast. Try and try

to fly back up the dark hole but fail - my wings can’t spread
wide enough. I quail, trapped by hard air. Tap. And stare. Tap.

*

She stops tapping the glass, when she sees my hand near
to raise the hasp. As I open the door - she struggles past me,

flies, hits the window, fighting for freedom against the pane. 
I grasp her gently, enfolding her wings. Long after they part

to let her fly free, outside in the garden, my fingers
can still feel the racing thuds of her heart.

When people mean outlandish, beyond belief or the pale, they say: That’s wild
Or referencing this myriad, kaleidoscope world, they say: The wild.

There’s a part of me that celebrates shark attacks.
Man-leg soup. Jaws is the underdog; let him stay wild.

And vending machines kill more people than wolves.
It’s a fact, look it up. (In the USA.) That’s wild.

As a teenager, I thought the film Into he Wild was the bee’s knees.
Now, I think pretending to be broke in a soup queue makes you a prick.

And those deep-fake lions on Parisian streets, rhinos trotting the champs-élysées.
My broke heart aches, sheds one real tear. Aren’t we halfway wild?

The rhododendron: hunting cover for ruling class bloodsport,
Nepali rose and cloud forest’s body (when wild).

The rhododendron: non-native invasive “alien” species. Yet they were here
before the last ice age, so who are we to passport trees? Ego is wild.

Imaginary lines in the space-rock dirt: Borders
are for dreamers! This planet will always be wild.

And who gives a heck who we praise or fuck?
We are one of four Great Apes. (The most easily riled.)

I tear up at films of riots. I tear down walls
and wake to wars. Which is civilised, which wild?

The rowan tree grows highest up the mountain,
the air so thin it is almost sky. It blooms wild.

No-one could describe her, this spouse,
Forever on the sidelines of his frantic life.
"She's just so neutral," remarked his friend.
"Remote and cold," declared his aunt.

She waited (she wrote) for her moment to come;
Waited, while mortality claimed his parents
And maturity his unplanned child.
And when his affair with city life had palled,
Did he turn to his wife in need and love?

There are women, he said, who do not dawdle
But take and fight and squall.
They show their appreciation.
Waiting shows nothing at all

Save boredom or a lack of things to do.
Not surprisngly, he left.
And perhaps for her there wasn't much difference,

Alone in the big house, waiting and dreaming.
Presently a lover appeared.
A little chap, quite good at gardening.
But strangely,
No-one could describe him very well.

We rode out through high summer
meadows towards foothills and forest,
towards the lightning struck herd.
Flash mummified, barred
forever from putrefaction,
their sunlit grave was desiccated,
impeding earthly communion.

Slowing, the wrangler nodded at
their drum tight ribs, their rigid legs
their weatherproof permanence.
If you don’t like the weather in Wyoming
stick around for fifteen minutes.
The beating of our horses’ hooves
was smothered by the stillness
of the dead, their silent lowing
deafening.

Higher yet, the vista of rock and pines
was broader than the sky.
Brush reached up to tug at our boots,
the spirits of creatures reunited
with the soil dragging us down.
The momentum of our horses
freed us. With each release
the scent of sage reborn.