I saw a falcon
perched across the way
in a sapling oak,
barely reaching above a house.
It was an open cage of winter branches.
It is like a wolf
appearing in your garden,
the paws of a panther
in the snow.
A wildness that smells of salt,
rare and solitary,
alive in a way nothing else can be.
Dangerous and calm.
I felt the chill of its talons,
its ownership of brambles and height.
The canny vision of its intelligence.
He has been in my neighborhood
a year.
I am not used to his presence.
He opens up a rift in my soul,
the need for wildness
that civilization tries to kill.
I want the falcon’s ferocity.
The semen of its blood.
The singularity of its wings
above the world.
I could never imagine
this falcon in a cage.
His eyes crossed with bars.
His body bound in a prison
of wood or steel.
He passes over my world
like a savage breath
rattling the door of my confinement,
belonging to nothing.
A law, heart wise.
The sound of a feudal cymbal
cracking the sky.
How to explain a wild thing?
That lives in the firmament
cleaving the heavens.