Chicagoetry: The Hawk

THE HAWK

Faces in the bitter cold
crowd:
A frozen bough breaks
under a murder
of sleek crows. Rooks

shriek beneath
the black-winged
clouds.

Red buses whir and whiz,
careening through the sprawl,
black tires bare
with bribes . . . say: briared

with bribes. Sign
of the times!
Drunken buses
reeling, poor folk keening

feckless
underneath.
Hawks yet lurk
On the Rookery roof.

This cliff, this ledge,
intercedes between us,
the rust-red dust,
and the Martian
dusk.

The cold hawk scans,
clutching curved
glass, awaiting a collapse,
just one, small fall.

Mine, on the February La Salle Street
Ice.
The hawk sees,
And waits

to break.

-

J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.