the jigsaw lineaments of klint and grike,

terraces worn clean by rain and gale—

 

this remnant shelf inched by slippages

from equatorial to northern ridges

 

before the elk arrived in slow hoards,

foragers, hunters, Neolithic herds—

 

the human increase of unhuman wind.

It rides there impossibly, like a mind

 

awake to air’s each shifting modicum,

wings spread out, a buoyant equilibrium—

 

not despite but through each thermal blow

buffeting headland and storm beach below,

 

while the raptor, tantalizingly still, looks

it appears, down on us, our bucklings

 

across stone—we who live otherwise

not indistinct, our consequence of days

 

quickening. Above: a moonscape slieve,

a fort’s scant ring of stones—and under: cave

 

on cave, a hidden system. This bird holds.

In the wind our windbreakers snap like ropes.