Forest Sunset
Freda Hirsch
Bill Cowee
A red tailed hawk sits atop a pole
tearing the carcass of a gopher,
strip by fleshy strip, beak excises muscle,
tosses the strand down its throat.
I’m not sure what upsets me.
Survival begets survival, or not.
Perhaps it is the primal element of nature,
impersonal, the eater and the eaten.
meat and talon and yellowed razor.
The raptor shrieks as if excited by the kill
but I do not ascribe human traits to birds
or beasts or the simple quest for food.
We seem to be ripping everything apart,
cultures, civility, respect. Each generation
weaves new stories about the decline.
Volcanoes trail dark steam and ash,
eighty thousand bodies bloat in a desert sun.
Where is the beast who would consume our flesh?
Geese, mallards, whole clouds of starlings,
the orange evening fills with migration.
I look around; find no place to lie down.