Weyward Walk- Aurora Phoenix

the killdeer eyed me somberly

from a surreptitious vantage point

after it had skittered its twinkled toed

trek across my path. riverside plover

pleads with me in him ring-necked scuttle

to join him in the farce of his diversion

\there is no nest nearby, oh walker\

so I avert my eyes, clouded

with knowledge heavier than the burden

of protecting thin-shelled young.

we share a conspiratorial wink, delusional

in our belief of salvation, the plucky

killdeer and I. my deer-legged pup

tugs feverishly at his lead, frisky

and perseverant in his quest

for noxious odors and loci rife

with forbidden pungent rolling.

it appears mundane, this twilight

stroll under the overhang

of the looming calamity.  nebula

shift miasmic and groaning

with subatomic splitting among

the swollen channels. she bangs

open the swinging “keep out” door

twitching bewitching hips as she sips

elixir of the cooling air and swigs

from her un-bagged fifth. insolent

gaze, redolent of spirits, rakes

crooked nails down the chalkboard

of my shivering spine. I inhale

her power, this she-witch

who has claimed me with the pull

of her dilating pupils. magnetized,

my feet, animated iron filings,

plod obediently in her beckoning shadow.