by Peter Richardson

Since it is not my custom to want less than the small bird
working hard with her curved beak above our cedar deck
to sate an appetite whetted by constant hunting, therefore,

oh, shining dragon that longs to soar over the white pines
in rattling flight, your metallic slides further heating the air,
disembowel a vulture for me, and from one of the conifers

above is my triangulated, codified, over-surveyed backyard,
throw its bones onto my land as I toast another June day,
saying to myself: I will live this solstice in the present.

I will break it down into nanoseconds and savour each
as the Merlin hawk savours the goldfinch on a hemlock,
plucking its yellow breast feathers aside before dining.

Peter Richardson has three books with Vehicule Press. His most recent title, Sympathy for the Couriers, won the Quebec Writer’s Federation A.M. Klein Award for 2008. He lives in Gatineau, Quebec.