Buzzard
hear me: high-pitched cry I am birth I am light I am sky unbounded my very feathers speak force, power I see you weighted to Earth tethered to creature after creature slow, slowing with fade and flinch a paltry ache of passing days you are open-mouthed soil-bound and I see you seeing me hearing my cry I will permit this: I accept your wonder do you envy my wide wings my hard grace my tender, slaughtering heart? do you long to rise, rise sky-bound untethered at last? do you long for no boundaried heart no boundaried life? let us pity each other you do not know my invisible borders written in air, woodland I do not know how you can bear to be tethered so. five hundred and forty three years it is the five hundred and forty second spring of this oak bud and branch root, shoot leaf and mossy bark and I think about an acorn falling five hundred and forty three years ago and I wonder how half a millennia later I stand beneath the weight and heft of an acorn's descent Kingfisher I looked for the kingfisher and found a lark I booked for a pimpernel and found plantain I looked for the path and found the unexpected way The unlooked for unhooks me from pendulum-heavy expectations Bio:Vicky Allen is the author of Broken Things and other tales (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020). She’s been widely published in print and online by journals including Mslexia, Stravaig, Saccharine Poetry, Writers Cafe and others, as well as anthologies published by Proost, Dove Tales, Fevers of the Mind and Black Agnes Press. Her spoken word work Wonderlines was performed at the Edinburgh Book Fringe in 2018 and Fringe at the Yard in 2019. She was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Vicky has a forthcoming “Stickleback” micro collection being published with Hedgehog Poetry Press, and is currently working on a full collection. She also practices as an illustrator/artist as well as working in the charity sectorFind Vicky on Twitter and Instagram @bringonthejoy
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Vicky Allen
Fevers of the Mind 
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