[Martin Elster]

One more for the bitumen.

Looking Higher

A red-tailed raptor, noiseless, scans the plains
for snacks that scoot and scurry through the day.
Yet does she ever point her eyes away
to marvel at the clouds the twilight stains?
Or think of looking higher, taking pains
to spot that coruscating dot which may
appear at dawn or dusk and likes to play
hide-and-seek, whose dense umbrella rains
sulfuric acid? No, she never leaves
her habitat to ponder far-off suns
cocooned in insubstantial cosmic sheaves
or space-time maws that munch on space-time’s breath
or think how, as she wheels, existence runs
hawk-silent, without rust and without death.


Alt. couplet:

nor pause to look within at that which runs
hawk-silent, without rust, and without death.

or:

nor see within herself The All, which runs
hawk-silent, without rust, and without death.