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?
