Shoot (Poetry)

She poses hare-like-tense,
head cocked to sniff for distant rain
and seeming always on the edge of flight,
with the light moving in and out
and angled through youth’s prism,
its flexing geometries
restless, fragmenting thin random shades
like a pale sun testing coloured glass.

All eyes and fur, she waits
skin silvered, limbs unconscious of their curves
and keeps her stillness close,
the threatened tremor calm,
an air of witchiness hovering
too fey for words.

At last she finds the lens,
feels the focus fix her image sharp:
the shutter snaps the second into tenths
as silence lengthens,
twitches, breathes again
and shy the shadows settle,
haunt the film —
almost caught in frame.