Sestina for a Hawk

A hawk silhouettes on a barren limb,
his eyes keen into the glum sullen sky.
Common, Cooper, Ferruginous, or Gray
I can't say--my eyes not so keen as his--
but I do know the cottontail below
on the lawn might want to forgo clover

and, leaping side to side past the clover,
race to safer places under scrubby limb
or even to his warren warmth below.
Death before breakfast, a dive from the sky,
a mortal struggle appeals not to his
hare taste or mine on this April day gray.

But what of the hawk? He studies in gray.
His rapt appetite includes no clover
green or tulips red and pink beneath his
lookout perch on a crow's nest oaken limb.
He hungers for songbirds sweet in a sky
slow lowering down to the ground below.

At least that's how it feels, standing below
Common, Cooper, Ferruginous, or Gray
this heavy-pressed morning of somber sky.
Why can't I consider fresh spring clover
instead of being drawn out on a limb
by this bold hawkish intention of his?

All around me grows silent still as his
clever sharp burnished eyes--if from below
I could see them--calculate lift from limb,
arc, acceleration, pursuit on gray
streaks of decision. With reckless clover
luck, he will seize and surprise from the sky

songs to feed the gnawing glum-hungry sky
that seeps onto his shoulders, drips off his
tail, nourishes white-flowered clover
where cottontails in season mate below.
I blink, recoil from stiff wings of blue-gray
beating within feet of my head and limb.

The hawk hunts the raw sky for prey below.
I'm not his songstress, just poetess gray.
That hare in clover keeps his lucky limb.