By Paisley Rekdal
Once, there were three.
Now only two
survive, the third’s
sawtooth comb of blood
feathering the walk. Still,
its nestmates call and call.
To drive it back
to them. To locate themselves
against its answer,
their safety. No answer.
I watched that one, once-
living hawk paste itself
to my gutter, moth
wings drooping as its thin claws
scrabbled at the metal,
the long neck pulsing uselessly
with hunger—
Didn’t it seem
like a gift at first
to watch these hawks
become themselves?
Each day learning the world
tree-length by tree-length,
sounding out their limits, loyalties
with a call. Now,
only the evidence of this
dark flailing, the absence
which passes in the human
world for self-
knowledge: death
that is become a betrayal
of our attention? This
is the miracle
I misjudged: that anything
lives to be the creature
it was meant to. To stretch beyond
its brutal more more more
of one mouth calling,
one mouth answering back.
And still that unheard song
lingering between them—
What shadow do you feel
reverberating from your need?
And what do you call it when nothing
echoes back, nothing
trails your voice
into the dark, your cries
that ever go unanswered?
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