Death in Motion

We met there,
In a forest of others.
I closed my eyes and reached for a black stone submerged in the dark water;
Sometimes black is so delicately constructed.
But with my touch the explosion of gunfire flashed.
Then I could hear and smell more clearly the death and life of shotgunned ducks,
of the disgusting jubilance of destruction: when the hunter injects the heroin
of the not-being-prey.

let them pretend but not us:
the animal trembling is all around us,
in between the air of each shared breath

and no amount of canyon-yelling or
other-killing will quench it

the dark forest world:
the rush of birds flushed out
just before the death-dive

what is it like to be comfortable in flight
then to plunge half-dead where nothing is centered upon you
like leaping into the pavement
from 20 stories but when you hit it is nothing but ordinary;
cheers even erupt - it's a celebration

and something beautiful has died in full motion:
nothing a photograph could hope to capture
but like a bird's beating heart,
slowly arcing downward to towards death.

you are beautiful you are beautiful

that is why they kill you
isn't it?

-Thomas Goss