Prayer for the Hunting Season
Tina Blade
Early autumn and the long white pelt
of fog rises and falls above
the river— like breath, like smoke,
like a woman’s soft body.
When gunshots crack
the air in two, we freeze
and don’t know
if the hunter has or has not
hit his mark.
Did the bird fall
to be gathered up by a dog
whose gentle mouth
lifts the dripping clump of feathers
from the water like a rag?
Or did the bird rise, frantic
as a shout and disappear
into a small hole of sky the exact
size and shape of its body?
Nothing to do but wait,
which is our way of praying
for Goldeneye, Wood Duck, Mallard,
for the sharp iridescence, the white precision
of wingbars, the obsidian
eye with its chip of fire.
We watch for divers, dabblers—
the simple ease of ducks
quacking and shuttling in
and out of reeds, where
water is sky
and sky is water.
Is it an answer or luck
when we finally see the clean
arc of a wing cut its sliver of light
from the wedge of darkness beneath it?
Tina Blade lives in Duvall, WA, east of Seattle in the Snoqualmie River Valley. She received her MFA from University of Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Calyx, Mid-American Review, Menacing Hedge and others. She is currently working on her chapbook, Broken Blue Egg.