Grief can knock you off your perch
Poet and artist Frieda Hughes loses a wise friend – and learns something profound about mourning
GOODBYE NANCY
At the Profile Books party I stand beneath trees
At the Crypt on the Green, so that I can talk raptors
To the editor of my magpie memoir as I drop
An oversize canape from a skewer into my cordial.
I will write about the female giant of an eagle owl
That I have just buried. For nine years
She watched over me from the lofty perch
Of her superiority. Arriving with boyfriend and eggs
She gave me three of her babies. She was only twenty-one,
But her age was given by someone who did not
Have her interests at heart when filling out her A10.
She’d dwarf me from her grip on my glove,
And turn the orange orbits of her accusations towards me
Like two setting suns, but when that last day came
And she flew from perch to platform to steady herself
And be ready as her organs gave up, I felt such gratitude
For our years together. I stroked her for two days
Before I let the earth eat her into a hole,
Her six-foot wingspan folded as tightly as blankets
On her way into the dark.