Hawk
Stephen Dunn


What a needy, desperate thing
to claim what's wild for oneself, 
yet the hawk circling above the pines
looks like the same one I entertained

might become mine after it crashed
into the large window and lay
one wing spread, the other loosely
tucked, then no, not dead, got up

dazed, and in moments was gone.
Now once again
this is its sky, this its woods.
The tasty small birds it loves

have seen their God and know
the suddenness of such love
as we know lightning or flash flood.
If hawks can learn, this hawk learned

what's clear can be hard
down where the humans live.
It'll never hunt again
where the air is such a lie.

It glides above the pines and I
turn back into the room, the hawk book
open on the cluttered table,
everything that must happen

happening out of sight, perfectly,
as if to be wild
means you carry with you nothing
that needs to be explained.