Greatwings

from "Bloodcry"
A work included in Shuteye Town, 1999

On the wings of the Raptor, Doctor Dream rises to an altitude above the fray. 2  Here the greatwings glide, descending in a long streaming spiral toward death. 3  This is a place of silent music, where one hears the deep harmonic unsounding that trails the coda. 4  The greatwings have sung all their songs. Their colors are almost gone, long since poured out in the music whose weight and hue once nourished the air and so sustained flight.. 5  But now the aircolors are also fading away, and the greatwings must come slowly down. 6  Still, they live. Their eyes roam the earth in search of greatwing hosts. 7  A doomed vessel may sometimes win through to port, but for the greatwing there can be no saving landfall. Its harbors have sunk into the sea, volcanoes have ceased to mold heartfire into rock for its anchors, and in all the swallowed world its eyes can never again sight home between the gray and gray of sea and sky. 8  Bloodcry of the Raptor...