After the great grizzly dies by Connor Deeks

All in the stilly night the great grizzly,

Thunders from the wood: a frightening image

In late winter, freezing in Yellowstone

When spilling water hits ground like hammer

Against anvil, already stone-frozen.

His roar in the late night under the stars

Butchers the silence and rapes the fearless

Until all who see tremble before him.

 

Those who came for the tourism won’t return,

Supplies and tents will be left to nature

As this mammoth is the top of the chain,

And his roar is the crash of the gavel

When the judge reads off the final verdict.

 

His display of dominance is over,

His horrifying beauty shown and seen.

Those before him know their impending fate

In this place where man has claimed for his own,

Yet will never know how silly that is.

He rears up and swings back his paws with claws.

 

The trees laugh around them with the cold wind

Chanting on the great grizzly, their brother. 21

He charges at these frightened human meals

Ready to even the score with these pests

King, revenge-tragedy, triumphal God

Of this historic place where nature thrives.

 

They close their eyes as the bear reaches them,

But a shot rings out and the bear tumbles

Dead before he could exact his justice,

Facets of dark red tumble out to snow.

The trees stopped laughing as their brother fell.

In the stilly night, the great grizzly dies.

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After the Air Tattoo
By Fiona Sampson b. 1963 Fiona Sampson

All in the stilly night the muntjac

roars from its hedge: a barking roar

of July, heat, its own broken-open

fruition

under black

viscose, a sky

static with plane-roar.

The intermission after the greatest air show in the world;

fields and lane recovering;

tarmac tonguing sky again,

languid

in the summer half-dark, towards Fairford

where ancient glass trembles,

facets of dark open to tumble out

king, revenge-tragedy, triumphal colors of God.