Crow Passage

Through the bone-white days of this passage

I step, vagabond traveller in its trackless hours.

The land, here, marked by dark

scatters of feathers,

and there,

a bare-limbed tree insists stark presence.

There is silence, thick in the mouth,

and within its terrible belly

a call that owes nobody pretty.

Green is a mockery here.

The air seared with old histories,

carrion

and still pungent with dreaming.

I take tatter-winged flight,

all that remains.

A small defiance against the near horizon.