Dawn Hunt (For Cathal Lagan) Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

Slowly their probing wings clear a path of sky.
Ropes of mist trail in last bondage
with scaled earth, with coils limply twining
to harness their rising and faltering
clamour-pitch past plunges into the foaming sun
that washes through crumbling hills.

The birds’ brief symmetry is blurred in sunlight:
the cold rifle focuses, dissects, wavering
in sleep-silent streams of air
that carve this landscape-before-waking,
where motion is without sound, sound without motion.

A trigger is dully stroked. The gunfall trembles
over the lake, past the silhouette that shivers,
shattered in a sympathy of air.
Beyond the glare echoes of echoes roll back,
stuttering out motion as the morning breaks.
The hunters, hands at their eyes, gaze stamping into the sun.