Christopher Woodall - Snap-shot

Somewhere, on the edge of the forest and field
I think I am invisible, following the wire
Back toward the village and mere obscurity.
All the trees are fading but the mushrooms thrive.

A noise high and behind, like a bag in the wind
Draws me around, pirouette of the sportsman
At his hunt when the eye-finger cord is pulled.
Death is always approaching at matchless velocity.

A wood pidgeon fat on the corn of captive birds
Has broken from the trees and thrusts like Hercules
In the sudden knowledge of a dropping buzzard.
The killer has caught the dying sun in its eye.

All the afternoon ends in less than a second
And the panic of death or a day of starvation
Shocks me motionless amongst the grazing beasts.
Cold streams pass unperceived beneath our feet.

On the way through the village I tell a farmer
Of the struggle and the magnificent escape,
Of the forced magnanimity of the predator.
Barely surviving; ‘Bloody vermin’, he says.

Christopher Woodall

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