TWO POEMS by Samantha DeFlitch
Ode to a Sharp-Shinned Hawk
In 1993, a report from Sandia National Laboratory offered language suggestions for long-term nuclear waste warnings in the event that humanity’s current knowledge of nuclear waste did not survive into the far future.
When she returns from September observation the other is delighted
to inform me of her findings: one thousand and seven hawks
rising from the mainland bog, all marsh marigold, cardinal flower, round-leaved sun
dew—engulfed in autumn’s flame as Saint Teresa, woman entirely on fire.
I have observed no such things with my two eyes
though I have seen detailed photographs of The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
and also sketches of red-shouldered hawks, peregrine falcons and I held a sharp-shinned hawk
in my hands this morning, in the laboratory. It was dead, as are most birds
we hold in the palm. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane read its specimen tag, and who alive
can translate? It cries out as the Sandia Report, a message only fathomable in its
feel on the tongue: the danger is still present in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill. I would carve this inscription above
the filing cabinet of birds poisoned and struck, birds shot, concussed
beyond repair: this place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it! What message have you for me, sharp-shinned hawk,
that must be delivered in the mouth of the dead? Someone must
observe the peatland migration, flash of life against a magnificent sunrise as
awake and flying very fast, things blur at their edges— the dawn creatures
we snag in net, in palm—it is hard to see the truth. We are wide-eyed and still
settle for hearing crickets in their dried sedge fields; only get a good look at warblers
if we grasp their legs or find many small bodies beneath the tall tower
and even then we have changed them. Carelessness is a function of perception
and choice: beached rock crabs could be dunlin eggs or doorstops; an open palm
is also a gun. At the edge is a door shaped like a door.
There is nothing behind; only another world, an entire shoreline and diurnal tides
inclusive, with its small animals we will scoop into buckets in the night.
North American Mesoscale Forecast System
Sometimes the New Year is like this: Your back hurts. Next week, you will receive a layoff notice. An x-ray indicates the presence of free fluid in your dog’s peritoneal cavity, and Eleanor has gifted you her old Janome sewing machine—an exchange for nut rolls. Down Mendum, a man decorates in reverse, leaving a bare evergreen in his front yard. We should not stare. It is a private thing, like a poem written beneath a heavy quilt, how the dog is naked when they remove her green-striped collar to find a suitable, large vein.
The weather has warmed, comfortably, to a false spring, bringing nuthatches and busybody black-capped chickadees to your back porch. The dog turns her face toward the sun. Further down Mendum, past an Ampet gas station and Rye, you find yourself at the edge of the river. Sometimes the New Year is like this: You need another surgery. Your dog’s body has healed, and she despises the sound the Janome sewing machine makes when its needle passes through the throat plate.
It is 8:55 p.m. You have eaten a meal alone. Downstreet, the man shortens his lawn, and the dog is crying to go out. She has grown old, is weaker in the bladder. Tomorrow, they will split you open, remove the strange growths that cause hurt. The medical professionals will do this. Sometimes the New Year arrives and you have already passed through the hills. You feel in your body the quilt of time, as one whose footprints are covered, tenderly, by the season’s final snow.
