Falcon

        Dunnsmuir, Scotland

Never mind diurnal, I know

you seize the day, calculate
fly-time to the fraction

of a wink, those unblinking

gold-flecked eyes
measure the hare’s gait

from half a mile. Wing-swing, dive,

thunderbolt of notched beak
quick to the back, snapping it.

It’s what you dream at night I want to know,

how sleep hones precision:
below, the darkened field of oil seed rape

or gorse, the tremble of a stalk,

the twitching ears, the scurry.
You know the carrion’s mind or spine,

how to break each one
precisely – a kind of nocturnal

practice for a clean kill
not sport, not

human fantasies
splayed,

hooded black
or red on a concrete floor

like those, say,
in Abu Ghraib.

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