My Mother Would be a Falconress

Robert Duncan

My mother would be a falconress,

And I, her gray falcon treading her wrist,

would fly to bring back

from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,

where I dream in my little hood with many bells

dangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,

and she sends me as far as her will goes.

She lets me ride to the end of her curb

where I fall back in anguish.

I dread that she will cast me away,

for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.

And I would bring down the little birds.

When will she let me bring down the little birds,

pierced from their flight with their necks broken,

their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood.

Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.

I have gone back into my hooded silence,

talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,

sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.

She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.

She uses a barb that brings me to cower.

She sends me abroad to try my wings

and I come back to her. I would bring down

the little birds to her

I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.

I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,

and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.

She draws a limit to my flight.

Never beyond my sight, she says.

She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching.

She rewards me with meat for my dinner.

But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her.

Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me,

always, in a little hood with the bells ringing,

at her wrist, and her riding

to the great falcon hunt, and me

flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart

to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet,

straining, and then released for the flight.

My mother would be a falconress,

and I her gerfalcon, raised at her will,

from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own

pride, as if her pride

knew no limits, as if her mind

sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.

And far, far beyond the curb of her will,

were the blue hills where the falcons nest.

And then I saw west to the dying sun—

it seemed my human soul went down in flames.

I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me,

until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out,

far, far beyond the curb of her will   •

to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where the falcons nest

I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak.

I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,

sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,

striking out from the blood to be free of her.

My mother would be a falconress,

and even now, years after this,

when the wounds I left her had surely heard,

and the woman is dead,

her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart

were broken, it is stilld   •

I would be a falcon and go free.

I tread her wrist and wear the hood,

talking to myself, and would draw blood.

Make-Falcon

Linda Gregerson

1

Of the oil glands . . . Of the down . . . 

     Of the numbers and arrangements

of feathers in the wing . . . I have seen

          on the plains of Apulia

how the birds in earliest spring were weak

     and scarcely able to fly.

Of the avian nostrils and mandibles . . . Of

          the regular sequence of molt . . . 

Aristotle, apt to credit hearsay where

     experiment alone

can be relied upon, was wrong about

          the migrant column. Concerning

the methods of capture . . . the jesses . . . 

     The swivel, the hood, the falcon's bell . . . 

2

The finest of them—here I mean

          for swiftness, strength,

audacity, and stamina—are brooded

     on the Hyperborean cliffs (an island

chiefly made of ice). And I

          am told but have not ascertained

the farther from the sea they nest,

     the nobler will be the offspring.

3

Triangular needles are not to be used.

          The room

to be darkened the bird

     held close in the hands of the assistant,

linen thread. By no means pierce

          the membrane nictitans, lying between

the eyeball and the outermost

     tissue, nor place the suture, lest it tear,

too near the edge. To seel,

          from cilium, lower lid,

which makes her more compliant to the falconer's

     will but also (I have

seen this in the lesser birds a swell) more bold

          in flight. The senses

to be trained in isolation: taste,

     then touch, then hearing (so

the bars of a song she will evermore link to

          food), and then the sight restored,

in order that the falcon may

     be partly weaned or disengaged from that

which comes by nature.

          The falconer's purse or

carneria, owing 

     to the meat to holds . . . 

The carrier's arm . . . the gauntlet . . . the horse . . . 

          The greatly dislike the human face.

4

If you ask why the train is made of a hare,

     you must know no other flight

more resembles

          the flight at a crane than that

the falcon learns in pursuit of a hare

     nor is more beautiful.

Make-falcon: meaning

          the one who is willing

to fly in a cast with another less

     expert (the seasons

best suited . . . the weather . . . the hours . . . )

          and by example teach.

5

The removal of dogs, which praise

     will better effect than the harshest

threats, from the prey. Their reward.

          You must open

the breast and extract the organ that moves

     by itself, which is to say, the heart,

and let the falcon feed.

          The sultan

has sent me a fine machine combining

     the motions of the sun and moon,

and Giacomo makes a poem of fourteen

          lines. The music is very good,

I think. (Of those who refuse to come to the lure . . . Of 

     shirkers . . . Of bating . . . )

But give me the falcon for art.

                                    *

You and I Saw Hawks Exchanging the Prey

James Wright

They did the deed of darkness

In their own mid-light.

He plucked a gray field mouse

Suddenly in the wind.

The small dead fly alive

Helplessly in his beak,

His cold pride, helpless.

All she receives is life.

They are terrified. They touch.

Life is too much.

She flies away sorrowing.

Sorrowing, she goes alone.

Then her small falcon, gone.

Will not rise here again.

Smaller than she, he goes

Claw beneath claw beneath 

Needles and leaning boughs,

While she, the lovelier 

Of these brief differing two,

Floats away sorrowing,

Tall as my love for you,

And almost lonelier.

Delighted in the delighting,

I love you in mid-air,

I love myself the ground.

The great wings sings nothing

Lightly. Lightly fall.

                    

Hawk on the Wind

August Derleth

See now!

                            — how on the wind he rides,

he wheels, he soars: he captures heaven

as a cloud.

High he goes,

and higher still —

and down, coasts down the slopes of blue,

rolls out of heaven, clouds . . .

See now!

                            — how on the wind he breaks

the afternoon, he wheels, he turns

above the stubble's snow-held ruins,

he takes the silver sun, the sheen of day 

upon his wings:

eye gleams,

eye hunts, the jewelled black,

the bead of eye that seeks in mouse

in stoat, in trembling hare,

house for the taloned death,

the voiceless death

on wings.

See now!

                            — how on the wind and under sun

his shadow presages his coming

and his going, his shadow courses field

and pasture, ledge and slope of hill,

and dwindles at his height.

High he goes, 

and higher still:

hawk's greatness gone to swallow's form,

gone high to blue-domed heaven

to tumble down

the wild March wind,

to hold the breathlessness of winter air,

the chill cold promise of the spring

in feathers, wings, wild heart

and strong.

See now!

                            — alone,

how on the wind he drops as stone

toward earth, and vaults the sky:

alone, no hawk near

to see, to hear his cry.

Alone: no mate,

he is yet no less great . . . 

See now!

                            — again, again,

how on the wind he rides, he wheels,

he scrutinises ground

on his eternal round

of wind and clouds and snow-bound earth

as daring spring,

as calling April lying where 

the grass is rooted, and the meadow mice

give watchful eye

to hi cross upon the sky,

his shadow's marking death's cross

on the ground.

See now!

                            — he comes,

he goes, he flows

along the rim of earth and sky,

he hunts and holds his taloned death

within, he rides the air,

and from the south blows

ceaselessly, the wind,

the wind . . . 

See now!

                            — how on the wind

he rides, he wheels, he soars:

he captures heaven as an April cloud!

The Magnificent Frigatebird

Ada Limón

Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—

             is it okay not to look out this window, but look out another?

A mentor once said, You can't start a poem with a man looking

             out a window. Too many men looking out a window.

What about a woman? Today is a haunting. One last orange

             on the counter: it is a dead fruit. We swallow dead things.

Once in Rio near Leblon, large seabirds soared over the vast

             South Atlantic Ocean, I had never seen them before.

Eight feet wingspan and gigantic in their confident gliding, black,

             with a red neck like a wound, or a hidden treasure. Or both.

When I looked it up, I learned it was the Magnificent Fridatebird.

             It sounded like that enormity of a bird had named itself.

What a pleasure to say, I am magnificent. And too, they traveled as a team,

             so I wondered if they named each other. Generously tapping

one another's deeply forked tail, or their plumage glistening with salt air,

             their gulag sacs saying, You are magnificent. You are also magnificent.

It makes me want to give all my loves adjectives they deserve:

             You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.

I am far away from subtropical waters. I have no skills for flight or wings

             to skim the waves effortlessly like the wind itself. But from here,

I can still imagine rapture, a glorious caught fish in the mouth of a bird.

____________________________________________________________________

Skeins o Geese

Kathleen Jamie

Skeins o geese write a word

across the sky. A word

struck lik a gong

afore I wis born.

The sky moves like cattle, lowin.

I'm as empty as stane, as fields

ploo'd but not sown, naked 

an blin as a stane. Blin

tae the word, blin

tae a' soon but geese ca'ing.

Wire twists lik archaic script

roon a gate. The barbs

sign tae the wind as though

it was deef. The word whustles

ower high for ma senses. Awa.

No like the past which lies

strewn aroun. Nor sudden death.

No like a lover we'll ken

an connect wi forever.

The hem of its goin drags across the sky.

Whit dae birds write on the dusk?

A word niver spoken or read.

The skeins turn hame,

on the wind's dumb moan, a soun,

maybe human, bereft.

____________________________________________________________________

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a thousand miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

    love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across hte landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.