Last year I learned to speak to a red-tail hawk.
He wheeled above me as I crossed a field;
he screamed; I pulled a blade of grass, set it
against my lips, and started screaming back.
We held that conversation for half a mile.
Once in a while he calls me out of the house
and I comb a border for the right blade of grass.
I used to wish I might learn what it is
we mean to one another; now, I keep
the noise we've mastered for itself alone,
for glimpses of his descent toward dead elms,
and a heart that will not mind when I am gone.
Henry Taylor, "Hawk" (1985)
