How does it feel, balancing on crammed
paws, coated
in killed fibres, lurching on two
long stilts,
your boulder head trying to fly?
How does it feel, sleeping in nests
so enormous and uncamouflaged,
so closed, inert and thick that they block
the smell of the Earth,
her dirt and cambium flesh, her whispers,
hoots, roars,
the liquid slap of her moon waves,
her leaf waves,
the broad spectrum given by the sun?
How does it feel to be touched all over
by nothing?
First published in LiNQ 43, February 2017
From A coat of ashes
Jackson 