When the School Burnt
I’d always been a bird, in spite of my felineness.
Something of the eagle was there, when
I watched over the school. I didn’t prowl like a cat
to nestle in some comfortable corner.
All of Hogwarts was open to me, in a glance,
my vantage sharp. I was a bird, yes.
When the school burnt, I dived from the sky
and scorched my wings. Now I walk
with a cane, neither bird nor cat,
just an ageing witch in a witch’s hat.
Another stick of wood, shorter, in the other hand --
secondary limb, too -- it flies
this way and that, nursing the wounds
of walls, charred; their lament, dark,
for teaching their arsons how to make fire:
a flick of the wrist, a stab of the hand,
incantations clear -- and the balustrade went.
It was an age, a dream like a moth;
when the fire came,
it snapped.
From dream to wakefulness,
from moth to light,
from flight to feet,
from ash to loam; I’m readying
to garden the halls once more,
keeping the watch as a witch
with a staff.