Trajectories #8

by David Chorlton

Against a sky wiped clean of every memory
a Red-tailed hawk hangs on a thread
of sunlight, while behind him is a kestrel
dipping and looping in a hundred
arabesques. Below them
Sunday’s rooftops lie at rest, with brunch
and lunch and football games continuing
and a weekly round-up of the news
consigned to silence. The kestrel’s
quick as a lawyer’s tongue;
the hawk is big but can’t negotiate
the curves the kestrel can. There’s no telling
where it ends. The facts come slowly
but they come. Without a lot
of decoration, just the intricate maneuvers
a diplomat is master of. There’s truth
and lies and every nuance in between,
so much work to figure out
who’s right. Or not, when the light
shines so brightly on the struggle
and the powerful wings
steer the hawk in his defeat
away.