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So this book, as I was
explaining to the class

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this morning, is actually
two books braided together.

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I was working on poems more
about me and my children

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and my experiences.

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And then on what I thought
would be another book,

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I was working on a series of
poems about a woman and her

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daughter and eventually
her son and her husband--

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although he's not around much--

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and a hawk who
looks over the girl.

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And I had planned on writing
that book as a novel in verse

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and another book that was
more contemporary and more

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autobiographical.

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And what happened was I
didn't like all of one

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or all of the other.

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And I found that the books
were actually in conversation.

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And so I took what I perceived
to be the best of both books

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and combined them and then
just scrapped everything else.

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Sometimes you have to take the
training wheels off the bike,

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right?

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And it wasn't waste.

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It got me-- it got
me to this point.

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But I do feel a little bit bad
for all those other poems who

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thought they were going
to make it all the way

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and could see the finish line
and we're running and running

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and like we're on pace.

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And then all of a
sudden, like they just

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turned an ankle
right in like mile 25

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and so this one's for them.

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This poem is called The Hawk.

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The hawk has never seen a girl.

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This new creature
smaller than a fawn,

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song unlike a bird's, hushes
the air with her gold hair.

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The clearing seems an
invitation to light her,

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but the hawk has
no light to shine.

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Only shadow.

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He hovers, training his own
dark double on the girl.

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They are tethered, an
invisible string between them.

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She rarely speaks but sings.

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The hawk has never
seen notes shaped

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like hers, each one an empty
locket with space inside it.

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But for what?

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This is not for
birds to understand.

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The hawk loves the girl best
in the open, only sunlight

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strumming the
tether between them.

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Her notes rising
easily to him the way

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an echo homes to the
voice that calls it.

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