by Anne Bergeron

something else, to see your ebony wings

darken the round wan moon at dawn

or to watch you soar in a chevron

through the gap of a wintry col

the way, small witch, your flight

will cast a spell of longing.

if it’s true you don’t forget a face

maybe you remember mine

that february day you went silent -

no raw purring no discordant vesper -

when I found your yearling stiff

atop a pile of snow neck downy

as child’s hair beneath my fingers

tail feathers rigid lustrous as onyx.

I thought winter (that ragged angel) or hunters

haunted your aerie usurped your call

and I searched bruised sky

and snowbound spruce for you

but found only myself cold caught by darkness

the way home much too long.

I want to be literate in soaring

winged arboreal free

so when grace notes slip and founder

and (snowbound) there’s no place to wander

I’ll remember sometimes the day means disappearance

and a long search for carrion

that you stay all winter bloodied gristle

gelid liver and rib bones in your beak.

Anne Bergeron’s writing appears in The Hopper, Flyway, About Place, Blueline Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, and Calendula Review, among others. A Barry Lopez Creative Non-Fiction solo finalist, a Dark Matter: Women Witnessing contributing writer, and editor for the anthology Dreams Before Extinction, Anne lives and teaches in Vermont. annebergeronvt.com