A Red-Tailed Hawk Patrols

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Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, 2013 ▪ Finalist

D.R. Goodman

A Red-Tailed Hawk Patrols

 

      Easy circles, yes, but never lazy—
      Those lyrics have it wrong—each careless arc
      An engine at its heart, a rust-red flame
      Of blood-red purpose. How deceptively
      She glides along; then, almost sleepily,
      A half-shrug, quarter-wingbeat fuels a climb
      Across the currents, past the ridgetop park
      Where treeline disappears into a hazy
      Gray of winter sky. She spirals back
      With feathered legs suspended, searching eye
      At work. How sweet the images we call on,
      Of parachutes and gliders: human stock;
      We dream ourselves beneath her wings and fly,
      Forgetting beak, forgetting spur and talon.