On Quartered Wing
I know him by his weighty cry,
it splits the white from the muted blue,
where the Gray Ghost lives.
From beyond my window,
the Northern Harrier writes upon the sky.
Like one who welds past and present,
I tend a meadow with a dog by my side.
It's a sober world,
of expectant peals, and rebel bramble,
the hawk lords over.
The Gray Ghost takes no cover.
When his shoulders quarter wide,
the hour of November unveils,
and fields shudder,
and the wanderer ignites the flame.
When once we lived summer's glory,
the bee, hawk, and I,
he dips his wing to the tenacious tree,
and with the indulging dawn,
sleeps away the humdrum weather.
I am not captive,
one hundred words walk with me.
Beneath clouded moons,
I am rapt.
We point at remote skies together.
—G. Brunini
8 February 2021
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