ANNCHUCK RISING

Night winds took her --
an Ibis, a Kestrel, a hook-beaked Owl,
she soared into blackness
she rose to moonlight, spinning her own orbit
under the drunken stars
a dusk-winged Falcon,
eyes piercing a blood sky, she wheeled,
she gyred.

                        #

She drifted on poppy winds, intoxicated;
Isis in Vulture-cloak choosing the weight of souls
some to pass,
some to take, shrieking, in night-dark
as all of her kind do.

                        #

On ground, snake-formed Lamia
questing for earth-lair,
a dank, shaded cavern, beyond even dreams' probing
until a rose-petaled twilight wraps auburn,
red, carmine, deep crimson,
an Eagle sky, sky drifting ever to starredness
black, wheeling planets --
a Goshawk, a Buzzard, a Harrier,
a Merlin,
a Scops Owl,
a Kite,
a vast-winged Lammergeier --
all of these, none of these, she tests the wind-
currents,
rising above thought.

                        #

Night winds took her, the feminine
blastrix,
the waster,
destroyer -- as all of her kind are;
the Kali, the Isis --
as all of her kind do
the Hecate,
poisoned-breast
milk-into-madness
she shivered the twilit sky.

                        #

Night winds caressed her, a questling,
a riddle --
a sin against God, red gouts streaming behind her
as spinning gales danced her dance,
purple-blue-midnight --
a quester, a riddle
swifter than thought, soaring.

                        #

Swifter than thought, rising --
Night winds took her,
an Ibis, an Isis, a Kali,
a Kestrel
a Horned Owl, a Jugger --
a quester, a riddle --
the Siva-Destroyer

                        #

She drank life in answer.

*first appeared in The Palace Corbie #7, Winter 1996-7