Hot Twelve O’clock
Biggest and baldest of eagles clutches a lunch
of seagull and screams ugly, muscles up
her black wings in a high V as the mirrored
white chevron hang-glides from her talons.
Hot twelve o’clock allows itself to be fondled,
consoled, by a big cool gust, which has just
blown in through the doors and snatched
from the dining table what had been
a short stack of torn magazine pages –
poems too good to read once and let go –
and transformed it into a small flock
of gleaming dead gulls falling from thermals.
What bird, balcony, branch will catch the black
words on white paper: “Running Scared,”
“The Dog’s Tooth”, “Summer Grace,”
“What I Did With Your Ashes?”