Night Flight
Downward to darkness on my muffled wings
I hunt the wintry silence of a dream
whose spell is shredded by a rabbit’s scream,
the coldest, purest note creation sings.
Femur and fur strewn at a supper’s end:
bon appetit, Reynard, rival and friend.
Fieldmice and frantic voles submit to law
whose statutes I administer in sleep,
ruling my fields and barnyard by the deep
authority vested in beak and claw.
Focussing yellow irises, I prowl
in the infrared spectrum of the owl.
Homosexual
Before me looms a tower
locked to the likes of me,
and there I am to cower,
traitor to chivalry
and every martyr’s bones.
What petals shall I shower
over the stones, the stones?
Henceforth the Lewis and Clark Foundation’s Dakota Institute Press will be Timothy Murphy’s publisher. This year they will publish a combined volume, Mortal Stakes and Faint Thunder. In the fall they will publish Hunter's Log.
