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Her waxy feathers are glazed with red blood,
As she’s struck down- with sleek efficiency,
Limp and lifeless… limitless she had seemed!
From her throat is pulled a ghostly whisper.

Yet more glorious than;
The breathless, frantic squawks,
The slow suffocation in darkness,
The bright-eyed, damp, sickly terror of temporal Hell

Ah, the savage gleam in those black vacuums,
Wolf’s wicked snarling mouth not so grotesque,
As man, who wears an indifferent smile?
Its bones are groaning, its hunger dragging.

Its weakness runs deep; it dashes and leaps-
Squanders fragile life,
Alack, over this cub no-one weeps,
But Human, hark at the glum trees!


© Florence Challender 2011