Thaw

Roused from hunter's solitary chill, released in taut low paean to future kill, fur ripples.
Muscle rites, shoulder roll, loose haunch saunter, to open goal. Gilt heart hedera deposed;
its ermine frost lost in slow glacial melt of winter's hauteur. Seasoned claws reclaim this garden as her own.

Silence fled in rattle and sputter,
semi-frozen leaf mould scattered.
Swart-feathered, velvet besoms,
all raggedy wing, scuttle, thresh,
fling debris through ossified hedgerow;
trussed widows to the world's embrace.
Pick, peck, preen, chatter,
hope for something better, in the thaw.

Seneschal, spine curved as the unseen S in Ice. Caudate circlet of reign and singularity
proclaims boundary of self to other. Her tribute in substance, to my higher, arcs its back;
a pink pawed supplicant, belly strained with stolen grain. Feline triumph pin-pricks snow, a blood rose wreath.