My Red Tailed Hawk Revisited

I have only glimpsed him
now and again.

The fat dove’s distraction is why he visits my yard.
He worships my bird feeder like an altar.

The prey, in a feathery puff of illusion, is gone.

My Red Tailed Hawk flies like a scythe
through the deepest blue furrows in my backyard.
Anhur airline.

Midday he appears through the crooked branches,
high in the large valley oak that covers half my yard
with nervous summer shade.

He stills, glares down at me, disdaining the
gravity I cling to. He’s done this before.
I imagine he knows gravity is godless,

his dreams filled only of Ra, Anubis, Osiris.
Most of the time, I think him thoughtless,

after all, his skull’s religion is Death & Silence.

With time, the weight of gravity swells,
pressing me smaller.

More frequently I sit in the patio, under the shadows
of clouds. I fend off drowse & dream. Knowing as I become
minuscule, it’s my winged heart he will savor.

Dan A. Cardoza lives in Northern California and is the author of three chapbooks: Nature’s Front Door, Expectation of Stars, and Ghosts in the Cupboard. Partial Credits: Amethyst, Ardent, Better Than Starbucks, California Quarterly, Chaleur Magazine, Entropy, Esthetic Apostle, Foxglove, Frogmore Journal, High Shelf Press, Oddball, Poetry Northwest, The Quail Bell, Skylight 47, Spelk, Unstamatic, and Vita Brevis.