There's something about a goshawk - a proud energy quite unlike that of buzzard. I hadn't quite realized the difference until today when, for a few seconds, I caught sight of a large bird of prey gliding low across an alder-lined brook into an apple orchard. There was a tight grace that shouted goshawk.
The Goshawk
An exercise modelled on Mary Oliver’s “The Hawk”
This morning
The goshawk
Rose up
Out of the stubble field
And swung through blueness -
It settled
On the tarry crest
Of a telephone pole.
Captivating as a queen,
In silhouette, arrogant.
Her ermine breast
Etched with stripes,
And I said: remember
This is not just something
Of the cool air, this is
God’s earthly agent
Of control & deliverance.
And the goshawk
Turned in grace,
To re-focus the stare,
To see further
Across the hedgerows,
Along the tree-margins
And I said: remember,
All live to die,
Experiments in perfection.
And that’s when she lifted in purity
Her miraculous wings and floated
Into the wind, eyes first,
And cruised along the tree-line,
All the time eyes clasped
Tighter than need on some
Whispered disturbance in the
Trees & litter & then
It swerved & moulded into the air
Becoming a perfectly loosed arrow.
Poppy Morgan
