I called to you when the hawk
landed on the fence
but you didn’t answer
 
from somewhere in the house.
 
Don’t tell me what’s wrong
with that. That’s not how to fill
 
the silence.
 
I only wanted to stand beside you
looking at the stripes
on the tail feathers,
 
the spotted wings and shoulders,
the gray diamonds of the fence
in faint fog.
 
There was a slight ruffling
in the morning’s wind,
that hunching and girding.
 
Talons gripped and loosened.
 
I took off, low, between two houses,
lifting on the air as I came to the street,
swooping up, soaring
 
and now I am altogether gone.