Hawks

Hawks

I remember, on the farm I grew up
On, watching them wheeling over the shorn
Fields after haying, hunting the mice
The mowing exposed, their damp green world,
Which they must have taken for granted just
As we take ours for granted, having been
Thinned into windrows. I hated the hawks,
Their boring hunger that I told myself
Was so different from my own, hated the way
They rose so leisurely with their warm kills.
I wasn’t old enough to see beauty
In this random and thus fair act of rapture.
I didn’t consider the ones who were taken
Might be the chosen and those who weren’t
Might have been envious of their brethren
Who must have seemed to them to have put on
Their small gray shoulders great red wings.