It swooped from the darkness
of the sky.
Midnight with blood on it.
Claws for ripping the universe
to shreds.
Wildness with the smell of fear,
flesh, sour death.
I was dumbstruck.
I saw what I never expected to see,
life ignited in such power.
Love reaching ruthless to the zenith,
to be destroyed or lifted beyond.
This great animal should not be here
I gasped.
It was truth beyond this realm
of quiet houses.
It roosted on a pole of wires
and dark lamps, contemptuous
of our creaturehood,
without its dimensions,
its force even in silence.
Who were we,
behind our walls and windows,
tepid dreams,
to this wild spirit of the night?
Its eyes consuming the dark
as I watched.
Did it look at me?
Smell the quaking of my flesh,
my longing to follow it,
to discover something,
bred out of me?
A final truth?