Crossfire

115 When a woodcock flushes from a thicket, the sky he enters is two skies, his eyes set so far back he sees in wide angles both horizons, camouflaged in light. Just the slightest break in the circle of his vision, or is it two visions, with one tremor of vigilance between them. Who are we to know. We whose eyes inhale a spirit through the crossfire, through the singular iris of the mind. A whisper pulls the trigger on his wings. Does he know the bright circumference is broken by a blindness at his back, a danger, yes, and so a center, an iron wedge in the fire of the visual. Always the ache of the invisible, the will to survive thrust among the pieces. The woodcock tilts his head, the world a puzzle so large in him his brain sits upside down the way a sky sits in the eyes of lakes. When he stares ahead into a future, it looks right through him. When he is hit, it is one voice, one animal that cries, to break the pool of heaven where he falls. CROSSFIRE BRUCE BOND ...