Helen Marie Casey
And So I Watch

Red-tailed hawks are said to have
excellent vision. Still, one crashed.
He killed himself on a car windshield.
How meaningful can that be?

You chose a tree, the same one
you began to climb when you were
just twelve, yearning to be bigger,
stronger, more muscled, and agile.

Now no one wants to look at the tree
because they keep seeing you, inert.
It's like looking at your Christmas gifts,
the ones you didn't live to open. Time

stopped. Altered. Before. Then After.
Nothing else except vacancy and
the scream of the red-tailed hawk
whose flight is notably deliberate.

The hawk occasionally hovers on beating
wings, and so I watch for you, thinking
you watch, too, but not all the time.
Not all the time.

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #6: Winter 2018, Volume 3 Number 2