This poem is called Sky Lord and it's
for my father, who died recently.
Sky Lord.
The small hawk flutters fiercely upright
shivering with great energy to stand so in air
over hills and their declivities.
Hunting more mouse and whom ally of wind, owner of sky,
elegant lord embracing what is known and not known.
A magnificence over us, which plunges for small life to eat.
Dear gods, you are dependent on the mouse that
lives with the hills heartbeat and knows more, much
more by far than your invisible school of latitude
and longitude.
You must study by compression of patience, movement
between eyelids blinking.
Must learn racing between two heartbeats,
and it takes you a long while and humility and failure.
Each time you come close, we look in awe of you
that the sky too has its stomachs to feed
and must come down to us and learn our ways for you do.
With splendor and work, you learn
how to kill and take what you must
while the sermon rot after spawning
in rain and in clarity, and we learn hovering and density
from your necessity.
We learn from your joy in the ground
as you raise each prey in your claws from the dear lost earth.