StylusLit

March 2017

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Breeding Season

By Damen O'Brien

Your eye is on me.

This is the time of straight lines.

You are planar to me,

perched on the direct path of everything,

you are looming in all dimensions.

I’ve felt the bead of your eye,

the whetted reach of you

is on me.

I cannot trust.

 

This is the time of nesting.

All must be bound to

the gravity of the nest.

There is no other direction

in the time of nesting,

but towards the nest

and your eye is always on me.

 

You are at the sharpest

angle to distress,

streamlined at the feather,

leering at the quiver and

the feather of my family;

she who is the black and white

and hope of the world’s egg.

I am the armour to your gaze

and your eye is always on me.

 

You have snatched at the egg of things.

I know this in my narrow beak.

You have brought down the

trees of the egg.

I know this through the feathers of sires.

I have chipped this with

my mother’s yolk.

 

You will blow down this nest,

rough wind of man.

Why should I trust you

in this time of lamina light.

I will swoop you down

the edge of your regard.

I feel your eye on me.