The Hawk Kitchen 4:53pm
From My Kitchen Window
I Can See Clearly
The Blue Horizon
Straight & Firm
Like A Swath Of Fortification
Substantiating My Existence
While Hunter Feeds The Cats
The Hawk Deck 8:51am
The Sea is liquid silver
in these early morning hours
I take solace in The Surf
to The North of where I sit
soaking in a last day of summer
with birds abuzz & cats
stirring on The Deck
The Hawk Queen Bed 9:30pm
Today I drove past A Big Black Crow
perched atop a pile of dirt
He struck Me by His Blackness
compared to the organic colouration of brown
He stood as The Finial Of Dignity
above a mountain of earth
His Mountain — His Keep
–singularly His Post —
The Crow made the brown Truly Brown
His Black was Truly Black
The Hawk Deck 1:00pm
Today A Horsefly
sat upon My Deck Rail
Big & Ugly
named A Creature of Satan
by My Mother —
I did not swat It
I did not kill It
I have never before
spared The Life
of One of Those
The Hawk West Desk Window 7:40pm
I hear the distant surf
coming in like radio static
whose constant frequency
is broken only intermittently
by the heckling of a gull
or by the infrequent surge
of a vehicle on the road
acting as an incoming wave
The Hawk Queen Bed 7:45pm
When I am old & dying
I want to lie beside an open window
letting in the waves on air
the freshest murmur of the sea
so that I may be carried off
to My Next Plateau
wrapped inside
The Nautilus
of
Sound
The Hawk Deck 10:35am
I bit into My Morning Apple
and bit into The Fall
Eliza’s off to school next week
and I will be alone with Hunter
The Cats
and breezy lines of wash
The Hawk West Desk Window 10:22pm
Every night @ 9:30 I swallow a concoction
of medical remedies for sleep
— not to build a cocoon of ages —
but to bury Me underwater
like The Dragonfly Nymph
Who emerges after several years
into clear summer air
to fly the frenzied mating dance
to be admired
should She land against
the sleeve or head
of The Silver Haired Doctor
bent on examination
The Hawk Portico 4:55pm
While putting on My Shorts
to sit out on My Hawk Portico
I had the Realization
that I write about Place
more-so than People —
that My Poetry describes the environment
I live in
& that if I lived anywhere else
how different would it be?
Joanna Gilman Hyde 