The Falcon Growing Old

The falcon wears its erudition lightly

As it angles down towards its master’s glove.

Student of thermals written by the desert,

It scarcely moves a muscle as it rides

A silent avalanche back to the wrist

Where it will stand in wait like a hooded hostage.

A lifetime’s learning renders youthful effort

Less necessary, which is fortunate.

The chase and first-strike kill it once could wing

Have grown beyond it, so some morning soon

This bird will have its neck wrung without warning

And one of its progeny will take its place.

Thinking these things, the ageing writer makes

Sketches for poems, notes for paragraphs.

Bound for the darkness, does he see himself

Balanced and forceful like the poised assassin

Whose mere trajectory attracts all eyes

Except the victim’s? Habit can die hard,

But still the chance remains he simply likes it,

Catching the shifting air the way a falcon

Spreads on a secret wave, the outpaced earth

Left looking powerless. This sentence here,

Weighed down by literal meaning as it is,

Might only need that loose clause to take off,

Air-launched from a position in the sky

For a long glide with just its wing-tip feathers

Correcting for the wobble in the lisp

Of sliding nothingness, the whispering road

That leads you to a dead-heat with your shadow

At the orange-blossom trellis in the oasis.

-- Standpoint, September 2010