Antidote

The flies were half-frozen, they could barely rub their forelegs together. How was it the mind still managed its manikin dance? The galvanized steel bucket had yet to heal where a hunter had shot it beside the old settling pond, now green with duckweed. What was it like to flicker wingless, like a flame, among the ranked objects of desire from the latest raid? And as the utmost treasure sang its drone note into the palm, to feel the fever leave. I have only muscle memory of this now: a hooded falcon ruffling its index feathers & the bare oaks like a ribcage through which I passed.