Trying to explain why I really like nightjars

Us on a June night, moonlit, hunting

nightjars. Frozen still on the scrubby heath

path – how unseasonably cold that

night. The churring filled the air, we scuttered,

holding our breath for silence in the shadows;

above the black tree line in the velvet blue

we saw it flee, its scurrying flight. What

Did I want to happen? Looking back up the hill 

where two deer stood like silver columns

guarding the night while I waited, on

my knees under a portico of stars, to look that

wild thing in its goat black eye and know

how there was something infinite about that

moment I was kneeling in.