Counting Hawks
Counting perching hawks
trying to watch what they watch
while a speeding car
beneath tense feet
races to overtake whatever blocks
each sideways glance.
Fifty percent of all bird songs go unrecorded.
Multiplexed avian modulations leave us
questioning our own questions.
Pylons loop their feelers,
thread fragments of electric birdcalls
into sun-slashed glass.
Eyes wide
trying to stay alert to the dangers
a highway offers as it dares all to slip
and slide
into a higher gear of insanity.
Taking in all possible flickering’s,
peripheral snap shots ticking off images
as they disappear into the gone.
Hawks don’t sing or warble,
their voice is hidden between
screeches
of triumph and fear.
Maybe there is a soft voice
for hawk chicks, and their mates
ritornelli sub-sonically cooed through
a razor tongue,
songs never heard
above the roar of our own ears.
The flashes of sound and sight
are blocked by tall trucks
the idling utterances of
stalled traffic
as we wait for the call of the wild
to filter through
a sparking matrix of thought,
but the wild does not call
it only looks at us.
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