A scythe of shadow skips through tree trunks, cuts
the greening buds; it chips cooled rocks.
Noiseless. I halt, turn to find the sun’s light
but spot instead wings of the hawk

circling in a wind, scanning distant ground.
Space is flattened with each swipe: day’s
being hatched. What’s left to make me understand
I’ve just been sighted, scratched as prey,

spared a forest death in mud, among stones,
by designing eyes past measure?
Not vole, not chick, but no longer their stranger,
kin by tremor of cut, I freeze—

like these others without cover, made dark
by the shadowing swoop of hawk