Slaying the Beast

(after “Flight of Swallows Over the Field of Gold” by Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

“… [his] breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.” Job 41:21

What you are made to understand from
the beginning is that everything is winged—
not just the swallows scissoring the air
across the warrior’s bolero jacket, but the field
itself caught in the blue curvature of furrows
coming unfixed from the landscape.
Against the screens (are they sycamore,
are they birch?) at the edge of the woods,
and the ivory of the pennant which billows
from one end of the lance, who could tell
a gray tail’s flicker from the side of a nine-
pointed leaf? Even the beast’s glorious
vermillion wings unfurl, as if to say there
has been no shame in using such power,
subdued now under the calm gaze of the one
who has yoked the rippling energy of this
world, as if he could make it do his bidding.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.