Hermes Drift

a miraculous form wrapped in feathers
closing the eyes of the day
opens his own eyes wide
Athena’s child
flashes through beams of moonlight
his wing curves create an all-knowing smile in the cleft of night
how swift he is in bringing death
to the thoughtless feasting of earth

a confusion of eyes look upward

through milk-merged, mist-soaked, fur-fleeting air
he falls, tearing the skin of the firmament with his sudden cry

the river floats on by
filling the veins and arteries that lead to the vastness of oceans
where Neptune’s hair shelters the young, as yet unformed, children of gentle Salacia’s sighs

the right hand of Zeus slices the wind and the rain
above the sea-salt beds
where two brothers will never be parted
bound as they are by a miracle unsurpassed
essential to every life

silver-backed fish shoal, slip-witted and swift
driven by beautiful Hermes in a trick of the gods
and mercurial wisdom switches this way and that
in an image painted with fishtails
showing us moving atoms unseen by a naked eye

And what is longing, what is hiraeth, what is yearning
but a sense of old displacements
from banks of shifting sand?
It’s the magnetic current
spawned in our deepest wishes
that persistently calls us home on elusive tides.

© A.Chakir 2023