HAWK Stephen Dunn p. 1989 ======================== What a needy, desperate thing to claim what's wild for oneself, yet the hawk circling above the pines looks like the same one I thought might become mine after it crashed into the large window and lay one wing spread, the other loosely tucked, then no, not dead, got up dazed, and in minutes was gone. Now once again this is its sky, this its woods. The tasty small birds it loves have seen their God and know the suddenness of such love as we know lightning or flash flood. If hawks can learn, this hawk learned what's clear can be hard down where the humans live, and that the hunting isn't good where the air is such a lie. It glides above the pines and I turn back into the room, the hawk book open on the cluttered table to Cooper's Hawk and the unwritten caption: that to be wild means nothing you do or have done needs to be explained. ======== ** contributory thanks to Sam Droege ** ======== ========