What Does A Hawk Do?

What Does A Hawk Do?

What does a hawk do to become extinct?
He does not live in a cloistered community,
where each limb resembles exactly the next.
He does not walk the world in the ways of a hermit,
his eyes askew to the art of inventions.
There are no locked doors with the artifice of hiding,
no predicament with the bill collectors,
or lost days in the slammer.

He has only to fly.

That one marvelous moment that manifests
in drifting, soaring, rising above the land
until he is in the middle heart
of blues & green & the sun is striking shadows
as his sleek head & beautiful eyes
pierce the morning with a blood call
of purple wind in his outstretched throat.

That one sharp moment when man sees
some glorious, living thing, he could possibly be
with that freedom & flight & hard to hold muscle,
stuffed & staring from a paneled wall, a piece,
of interesting conversation or control & the vanity
of holding that moment, when the hawk fell,
his great strength gone, his landing, not spectacular,
his eyes, amber glass, in the library.

 

Reviews

[mysticgmekeepr]

Thats lovely and well crafted. We have a lot of hawks around here. I like to watch them soar, and sit silently perched and waiting. I'm always praying they don't stumble upon a successful hunt with a mouthful of bluebird.

[W.k.kortas]

To build upon what the learned Mr. Orlando has said...this piece is chock-full of images (and splendidly presented ones, at that) showing the juxtaposition of our lives-- the "cloistered community" littered with "bill collectors" and "locked doors"-- with that of the hawk, who "has only to fly", and the result of when we try to quantify epiphany ("(t)hat one sharp moment"), only to have its true essence disappear when we try to classify it, or try to present it in the sad two-dimensional world of the page, and so make it some dead thing with glass eyes in a dusty corner of the library. Not only is the piece built on an exquisitely executed metaphor, it's just finely crafted from top to bottom. Top-shelf work, without question.

[R J Askew]

Beautiful job...had to read it when I saw the title sitting there in the notices or whatever it is...my first thought before I opened the poem was "Kill, he must kill and kill again..." When I'd finished it I was thinking of the hawk as symbolising man as a hero or superman, a heady but dangerous concept. it is exciting to be a hawk-man-hero, but that is the problem as excitement leads to contest with others to win. this leads to war, war, war. And so the hawk man must himself die a little to live the more. No more heros any more, no more heroes any more -- The Stranglers. -- No more Shakesperos...