Thrush

It always begins the same way.
The pup is absorbed
down there where fruit-net and thorn-trees
funnel the gloom.
A crouch and a pounce.
Something is thrashing and crying.
She pounces again. 

My voice demands her and she comes. 

There must be a way through I haven't found
where songbirds—blackbirds, thrushes—go
to turn the soil for worms.
Then, panicked by the pup they rush full-flight
into the drapes and foldings of the net. 

It's quiet now, the wet air stirs
the wind-chimes in an empty tree. 

I catch the trapped bird in my hand
and, sliding scissor blades beneath the down,
cut strand on strand. It strains, a fresh blood marks
the soft grey stuff of breast, the mottled throat.

Then suddenly its head turns and it strikes.
It strikes again, oblique, the angle poor,
eye fixed, beak wide, an empty silent gape
like those old tales where tongues
were wrenched away to stop all witness— 

It stills, I still. It watches from a life
intense as mine. The last strand gives. A wing-rush
and it's gone into the dusk beyond the thorns.