Poetry: Peter Atkinson

Winter Hunt

for C.L.

Translating you into words, I do not feel the whir of quail or wonder at the cougar bailing from the rocks but only what is not there in trying to bring it close.

Like the wind pressing down the grasses of the long draw in which I hunt, the weight of the winter seems to have flattened every happening between us. And yet I may not touch or be touched by you.

Silence has taken the shape of your mouth. Cuticles torn and raw are the color of your lips, but these eyes find only the grays of a desert lit by planets under the strangeness of the moon.