These Hazy Days

When the Peregrine Turns

You're birdwatching again, this time
from a bench in the gut of Chicago.
An American crow walks by, and
a throng of rock doves too.
One pulls at a dry brown shoelace
and another at a Styrofoam cup.
A child screeches on a swing
from a nearby pocket park.

Your attention flits briefly to
these things, then back--
back to the silver towers with
their well-groomed corporate windows
and all those panels near the roofs.

At last, with a thud of adrenaline
in you, you see a peregrine
leap from the thinnest spire
of one such skyscraper.
You watch it plummeting,
pelting, plunging down
into this messy city.

Through your binoculars,
you observe rather absently
that the bird seems in an
infallible pursuit of something
rather large, and indescribable.

Its feathers are plastered tightly
to its slight, angular body
and its talons clench,
almost crushing its curled feet,
as it dives.

Its eyes remind you of the
polished pebble products
of tumultuous rivers, intent
and always turning.

Then suddenly--suddenly--
the peregrine disappears into
the sweltering complex of
mile-high buildings.
You can't see it any longer.

At once, you remember something
your mother told you fifteen
years ago, on a May Day
choked with indecisive cars--
she said that
city birds in sunny weather
are by far the silliest;
they never know quite
what they want.

As you sling you pack
onto your back and
move on through the world,
you realize that you must agree
with your mother now.