The truth is that either one can cut the flesh and rip in jagged precision. Each one can depend on a hand extended: the falconer’s falling glove, the worker’s callous. The truth is in the job, not the wound.
For to the manner born, the reach knows its risk. You can keep them both in the shed behind the house, feed one and oil the other. That which in you that was cut from flight, that which severed.
This poem emerged from David Lehman’s "Next Line, Please" column prompt to use a few oft-quoted phrases from "Hamlet." Since I’m married to a Shakespeare scholar, I took it on as a bit of a joke. But then something happened. The hawk crept in—a ghost from when I worked with an injured red-tailed hawk in my twenties, and an echo from my first book. I was once the falconer.
Jeffrey Brown profiles "physician-poet, or perhaps a poet-physician," Fady Joudah. "Being a poet and a writer and hopefully a better listener, I have learned to use a language of faith or hope or support or terseness sometimes to communicate with my patients better."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Here are two things I have a difficult time writing about: myself and the sacredness of a great poem. Maybe a great poem can give us shape when our own—that is, whatever holds us together—has slipped away."
