A Poem by Gita Ralleigh

The Lammergeier’s Shadow

If your body is the map, its icy ridges limbs,
this heart is a wellspring. Rushing source of
streaming vessels, flooded breath-clouds,
violaceous bruise of fractal capillaries.

Newly stilled, your mind chants neuronal traces
as you gain the summit: sculpted ruin of oceans.
Your lips dark shaligrams, arrowed and horned.

Above you plunges the lammergeier’s shadow,
bone devourer, racing the spine of the Himalayas,
curved to an archer’s bow. Restless winds shriek
from the East. A temple bell shudders, dust scatters.

Gita Ralleigh is a poet and doctor of Indian origin. Her poetry has been published by The Rialto and Magma Poetry among others; her books are A Terrible Thing (Bad Betty Press, 2020) and Siren (Broken Sleep Books 2022). She is a member of the Kinara poetry collective.