“Seeling Night” by Ahsenti Alfedil
May 21, 2026
Up where we cannot see,
among the blossoming bones of branch
is the deliverance of sustenance—
in a fatigued crescendo plummeting
this woman with the body of a bird,
still soft from birth,
tilts to her young’s tune
for the covenant of feeding.
and what would be the sound of
sated bellies bellies
that have had to
just the same
wait to hear the beginning of a poem,
is replaced with the metallic silence of
something bloody smuggled in:
a beak dampening the dark—
then nothing.
only the mother slipping whole
into the Seeling Night
In her absence, one falcon—
who never wished to fly,
now unfeathered in its resolve
and fevered by hunger—
stirs
with a clicking hinge
and leaves the rest for their innocence.
the others do not watch the sky;
their gaze remains fixed on their
mother’s newly dead body
and their bellies rang with the memory of want
of owning a new rhythm
the hymn-like night
is led by our momentum
should we choose to liberate our hearts to speak,
from behind the hush of trees
our mother will not hear our small percussion
nor satisfy us with the iron leaf
Its wings
primitively swift and silver
cuts sharper than dawn
this unlit field scratches its urgency
and where it soars, there is a loss.
snapping insects mid-flight,
dragging rats by their tails,
parting marrow from bone—
choice or no-choice
clawing the same wing
a harvest obscene
something unseemly, but
nonetheless electric.
Could I rise from this haunting?
will I forever be damned to this half-life of hunting?
even the moon forbids me from owning my soul
before me is my birth trail
and the dulcet sounds of my mother reclined
the distance
a kiss
a beak varnished black with blood,
a stitching of the eyes calls
and so, this falcon too, beckons for the Seeling Night.
In this hour, as the dawn chorus begins its chant
the last falcons sit in their nest
spoiled with the milk of white ash
one halved-heart falcon, its wings stagger upstream/ against the sky’s own current,
by no mistake,
is the second to begin flying.
And I know—
you will make the same attempt
to conquer the liegeless air
too eager to sit, too lethal to bear.
This poem was written by Ahsenti Alfedil, the 2025-26 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate. She was mentored by Amy Hirayama and Jordan Imani Keith. Performed at the Seattle Arts & Lectures Encore Series event with Tommy Orange at Town Hall Seattle on May 21, 2026.
Posted in Student Writing Writers in the Schools Youth Poet Laureate Support 2025/26 Season