Feeding the Hawk 3
(Click on the last word when you get there)
Now
the trees are bare, ice
comes up through the marsh
a sunless sky descending
beads at the end of twigs
A sparrow lights
And settles
preening, still. What holds it
I wonder, in a season
cleaned to the marrow
with the night falling around it
On its bough
A redtail
kept for falconing, stepped off the glove
once, for a moment, as I worked
to free its tangled jesses,
And I remember how that hawk
Begins to close
Its talon
over my flannel shirt, pausing,
before it clutches bone,
to hold me in its gaze,
holding still, holding me even