Finding You In a Late Field & Other Small Mercies
When soft and stampede appear in the same sentence,
there’s expectation of loss. Of what could flourish.
We claim it is dappled, even without seeing the hooves.
We want to name the creature — the cause of dust rising.
In a week, maybe prayer or a sense of singing,
but today, we plant ourselves whole in heavy turf.
I could point to the glades where they happily grazed.
Blame the startled mare, or the incidental shotgun.
And the foals, looking up only to taste the rain
as it arrives without a siren. No apparent casualties.
But how we obsess to save the foal,
two eyes peering through a shower of slow bullets.
Because each droplet means more when in love.
The rivers shiver their way through a dry spell.
A field effervesces as if finding us in its fragrance,
lightning golds the sharp V of migratory geese.
We are looking up too, at where language failed.
Our tongues outstretched to this rare syrup.
The season says: strip off your layers.
Lie down, let the deep cold run its course.
Soon, the wordless music of snow, empty of my footfalls.
The blankest score of pale meadow-frost.
Fog, breath, sheer manes — streaming
a ritual blurring towards the next joy.
Some small mercy unplugging the sun,
so we can hide a little longer, inside this great game,
"When soft and stampede appear in the same sentence,
there’s expectation of loss."
'Finding You In a Late Field & Other Small Mercies' by Vikki C. in FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art - Issue 21 – The Dream Issue. @feralpoetryandart.bsky.social
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![We don’t see things as they are,
we see them as they were
In Aether, point to any beauty—it has surely left.
Before theory, photons began their far-dance
towards who we became.
Now, at last, we witness past luminaries.
The once Great Equatorial Telescope, surveying for soft proof.
Delays inevitable for a glimpse of good.
Minefields in Croatia glaze with marigolds
—one for every future [tragedy].
Pre-extinct wings rewild our rifts.
The ex-you—less cataract—more civil twilight
& though speech is improbable,
something bonds our miming-hands.
In milk-stained gowns,
each graduate
still an infant
—diminishing.
Vikki C.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nhpipu7pozn3whkp2fj3wjy5/bafkreicjbwtmh6262pswvnypoiimlbzfigyuiewrqzor7etov6eu5fjys4)
