red-tail hawk

carbon on the inside

charred, luminous, baffling

scorched in its own kiln at dawn

like red-tailed hawks

stretching out,

barely recognizable

circling above the meadows when we first saw them

when i didn’t think anything beautiful lived in jersey

spring, 1993.

sedona, arizona.

standing in an empty wash out in the high desert

starring above the blood-dust walls

mesas and buttes

sharp edges underfoot,

spiked flowers.

pale clouds against a paler azure sky

black crescent flakes flicked above the rocks

too high to be ravens,

too brooding

too soft

like fingers swollen at dusk

marin, or was it oregon?

either way.

(i was thinking of her)

feeling my breath pause in my lungs

chest heavy

but not stopping,

the pacific lurching.

a dead mouse about thirty yards away

convoluted in its own rotting hair-shell

bones exposed

blood streaked on fatty muscle

and nearby,

a red tail feather lost on fanned fennel lace

verdant electric

caught in the fog

1929 scotland.

that wasn’t me.

and none of those hawks live there anyway.

but once i saw a film by an austrian director

where three men went bird watching

and only two came back alive.

the location of the third was never revealed

except in the credits.

coda
in between the lost seconds after we divided everything

when you sucked the lime in the corner

in the sweltering heat

wondering whose water-stained paperback copy of phillip k dicks it was

before giving up and throwing it with your shit

into the stolen milk crates in which you packed your gains

and measured my losses

in garden grains that shuffled under the stove

i stared out back in the wash,

livid and bent from

for some reason i smelled only your  hair,

slightly burnt

sun scorched in august