The mount squats like a silent goddess

Above the fuchsias and the village shop

That play like children at being wild.

Bushes below are sparrow song loudspeakers,

Hedgerows cautiously wend their way between fields full of

Not so certain cows and sheep.

And the heart of every field is a throne for a male pheasant,

Surrounded by a hareem.

His an empty, foolish pride in a kingdom of dirt and rocks.

Like them, we are strangers in this land

Flung out only recently upon its earth

We are sore thumbs, like crabs in a rainforest or turtles up a tree.

Kites and buzzards drift up and down,

Beads on an abacus.

Green woodpeckers torpedo between tree tops,

Flights like rollercoaster rides.

For us, moving up is a struggle harder fought;

A stream of stones rolls downhill beneath our scurrying feet

From on high the crows and cars below are specks of sand

That could be held in a palm.

As we move from brow to brow, partridges scatter and stutter their surprise.

Two kestrels, cast themselves for luck onto the breeze

Roulette balls rolling through the molecules of air.

Their patience and their plunge,

The metallic snatch of claws,

Brings fate home to roost.

Pheasants launch themselves from earth to air,

A habitat just as unfamiliar to them as this ground

Reluctant fliers, wont to strut not swoop,

They are practising for that final flight,

When their engines will cut out and they will plummet down,

Feathered stones dropping, riddled with bullets.

Their limp bodies, mostly bone,

With legs and feet outstretched as if still scrabbling to cling to life,

Adorn our path.

Wings and breastbones are still decorated here and there

By feathers jutting out,

A headdress in the long grass

The flesh long gone, now coats the belly of a fox.

Alas no pheasant, nay no fox nor harrier,

Nor even her own angels outlive this goddess.

Our fears and our secrets, too dark to see against the blackness of the sky,

Will be remembered by her long after we, like pheasants,

Have had our wings clipped.