Haunt of Thieves: part six
Haunt of Thieves
Part Six
The Betoe’l-fowl awakens weak-eyed
On moonless nights she leaves her nest
And skulking to her mates, she fans her
Stinking feathers, peers with a predatory glint
(By dark inches
like standing stones bewitched,
beneath the starlight they three creep)
She hears a busy, wrathful peep, a tick, tick, tick
The Betoe’l-fowl draws nigh a tempest
More sibilant than the nighttime breezes
Yet the faint utterance of a rat
Or brown-backed cricket’s chirring
Is an impassioned battle scream
within this melée stirring life
Among the dead
Nibbled clean-boned by the rippling tide
She, who rules among scavengers; her muscled neck
her tail unfurling warning, her dagger bill
Impaling
And when she calls, her fellows in turn give voice
The shattering of glass suspended on a fluting note descending
Fabled as the parting wail of the slain
From mound to mound they vault the crest above
Met by the pack-leader slinging like a whip
Howl on howl
The piping exhalation of a burning thing, unearthly
Gathering on the hound’s
Moan, whistled in a man’s throat
The signal-cry again falls from the thieves’ haunt
One ember like an idol’s eye wobbles red
One follows, and they scintillate, crazed with rage
This forgotten god, he stares askew
Until the molten setting sun subsumes his light
So it seems
Gafeidda knows only one unanswered thing
The rest means nothing now
The Shepherd close behind keeps to his word
The thieves are also countrymen
The lieutenant with his foreign dogs
Third among unknowns, is not
But they are all murderers…and yet
…perhaps the Shepherd—he is a strange man.
Gafeidda asks, “Why, Shepherd, can I not
take my knife, cut the buttons from my coat?
Throw them on the path, all I have of worth
…would they not let me pass?”
Haunt of Thieves
Haunt of Thieves (part seven)
Turtle Island (part two)
(2015, Stephanie Foster)