Poet and Falcon
A fairy tale
Never imagine belonging means lack: Think of the falcon. Whose claws are sharper flight is further thought is quicker than hers? Yet hold up your frail wrist and she tilts a wingtip considers only how far to fall, then plummets. Your mastery is your gentleness and almost an accident: From the piney-woods hill to the limestone river you among all the land-bound folk have given her a name. Now the world has an axis: Wherever she flies, her mind-map holds herself — a freedom, a point on a vector — and you, her origin, very small, off beyond eyesight behind your thatched hut one arm lapped over your lute taking a nap in the ferns.