Dante


When the hawk plunged,
like a meteor
straight down into the netting over the chicken run,
and bounced back into the air
with wisps of his own feathers drifting
from the sky,
he was a shock
out of the sea of air

When, a few days later,
he appeared by the quail cage
behind the house,
in the old dog run,
I saw an enemy,
an intruder
after our birds;
a combatant
who had made camp in the pine grove
seven metres from the living-room windows,
where I saw my reflection
and the hawk
in the same field of vision,
and rushed outside, shouting and waving,
to scare him away from the farmyard,
worried
that he might strike Cesi,
our slight and lightweight female cat –

but as the days passed
and the hawk did no harm,
but mostly just sat on a rail
running around the dog-run fence,
and was established to be a young goshawk of the year,
almost certainly born nearby,
inexperienced
and having trouble catching prey –
I see him tonight,
on the dog-run fence out there,
in the half-dark and foul weather,
nodding off, sleepy and hungry –
for what he is;
a creature like myself,
in his own unique circumstances,
who almost seems to honour us
with his unreserved presence
and his magnificent beauty
and his vulnerability
in a hard existence
he must learn to master,
his first year on the planet

And suddenly
I experience him, whom I call Dante,
as a herald across the boundaries of species,
from Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion –
whose other names are Avalokiteshvara
and the Dalai Lama –
who now inspires in me a new love
for Dante the goshawk, the young one,
who is visiting us;
who does us the honor;
dissolves my hardness
and lights up my darkness
with all the love I am capable of




Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 11 times
Written on 2026-08-15 at 13:43

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