Morning Hawk
Brown feathers, smooth as frosting,
conceal taut, predatory muscles.
Bloodied wings sheath precisely
as German knives in a block.
The streetlamp perch where this hawk
dominates dawn burns with quiet gold.
Another day on Earth
heaves back languid arms,
but no flinching whatsoever
is seen within this watcher.
An enigma of stillness,
well-honed emptiness,
native lord of silence.
Smaller birds chirp and twitter below
through garden ornaments of tinsel.
But the master does not look down, alone
in the wind and listening for subtler things.
Gathered within himself and telling no one,
restraint and simplicity the marks of great power.
If crimson morning shimmers on his shoulders:
he is ready.
If night again absorbs the world, as it will:
he is ready.
Every force and rhythm of time is seen
from this solitary height, and accepted.
Then suddenly, at some inner impulse,
or an invisible shifting on a mountain
vague and enormous five miles away,
his claws surrender the metal post
and wings gracefully grip the air
through which I always fall.
It is a movement of such stillness.
Aye
Wheat at Ramot Gilead
this rustic desert evening,
and smells of camels and sheep
upon my awareness leave
Feelings of war and peace
that, entangled, somehow agree,
as if civil war were a status quo
within God and within me.
The sun hoarsely whispers
its will over the harsh landscape.
I get low to the earth, rub soil
through my fingers, and meditate
On the wanderer Abram,
follower of flock and Voice,
the father of faith demanding
I choose how to make a choice.
His presence and problems
are suddenly right here,
and over an old wine of pain
dangles my paradox of tears
That swear loyalty to instincts
which somehow already know
ambition must be baptized
in endless tortures of No.
A thrust toward the all
to the one must still return
by an oath with lethal love,
even when it burns.
Jewels of fire, dangling
danger through visions of "I"—
your teacher is the herdsman
who to the Voice said simply
"Aye."