The Way to the Gray Hawk

David Chorlton

 

Clouds well up into a chorus of light

above summer hills

stripped to their contours

by each peal of thunder

that rolls across them as sound

casting a shadow.

                       In the tangles

of birdsong along every trail

through ash and mesquite

the hard throated call

from a cuckoo keeps up

an insistent tease until

slender wings flash

where they glide into view

for a second and away to where time

cannot reach.

                 The way is marked

by the hallucinogenic glow

on the sacred petals

of Datura growing at the intersection

of reality and delirium.

                                Leaves pull

together; the sky is held in trust

all the way along the path the erstwhile

railway ran, where now

the trees leave space

only for its memory to pass

between them, followed by

a raven’s call.

                 Still far to go

and the sun is low

as edges rich in color draw the shapes

of cottonwoods within them.

                                         Another day;

the grass is wet and darkness

turns into a heron on the creek,

gone in a wingflap

 

leaving green behind in overlapping

shades past fallen trunks

whose textures of decay

lie richly on the earth,

and farther along the circuitous way

leading into and out of

the secrets that grow

in riparian shade, the search continues

with no end in sight.

                            Looking up,

ever up high among the tall and leaning

boughs, some broken

and some twisted, some tapering

to a dead point with no foliage,

some holding a nest, leads only to

the clear blue beyond

all that is known, until

                                a Gray Hawk's cry

is a fingernail scraping across

the sky.