The thrive and thrust and joy
Of summer sight
Of dogs
Running blissful through late spring and early corn
Of shadows yawning over hillock and hill
The distance seems settled
Cast and stilled
While all around 
I am surrounded 
By bright wide awake winds
Rounding up the loose
Pulling in the slack
Gathering everything back
To symmetry

Under a thousand new leaves 
I sit in comfortshade
On earthseat
And watch the black belfry ballerina
Dancing around invisible flames
The wicked wise witch
The ragged kite
The sky caller
Up on tiptoe downdive and fold your spread of feathers
Layered and stitched by struts and needlebone
Wrestling with wind and wing and all ablaze
Towards the raging sun

Who moulded you to their mythology?
Who carved you into the dark dove?
Who looked you in the eye, beak and claw
And decided you: a saint of darkness?

As a young crow
I searched for gold crested wrens
And watched silver minnows
Glisten in wooded streams under greenhood and woodlight
Smiling then as I do now
Youthful now as I was then.