Hawk Circling Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

He floats on fragile clouds, cocks
his eye and the world tilts.

His wings fold against the shocks
of wind: bracing his legs, he walks on stilts.

Solitary circles of patience he traces
in the sky over his shadow
that stalks across the earth’s small places:

round and round and to and fro
the ever-tightening circles go.

When his shadow finds a shape
that moves, his eye locks for the kill.

He descends the steepnesses that slope
into his eye, down to a darkness that’s inevitable.