A million bitten off breaths
Hang quietly.
I’m close enough to hear
her thudding -
A jarring noise that parts
a cloud of frothy swans.

We’ve all seen photographs
in Wildlife Books –
I’m sure you can conjure up
the moment a water bird
lances a sunlit river
with the very tip of its beak
to gobble a fish.
It’s a difficult photo to take,
It’s all over so quickly -
The fish caught,
The river moving, moving,
Still.
But here she is in front of me,
That bird,
Suspended with one
Foot in this world,
And the other
In another.

Her toes grind up the
Spotlight,
Trampling into
the moon and balancing there,
(I'm surprised the stage
is not full of chalk.)
It's not beautiful,
Not ghostly,
But all visceral meat glistening,
Fitness, strength, survival,
Like nature…

No need to take a photo,
She is a picture that my mind has
Tricked me into taking.

So perhaps that’s talent, darling..?

Or
Perhaps it’s something else, with a name I never knew.