What Becomes, the Hawk – a poem by Koss

What Becomes, the Hawk

a pause and shift in the air
.                                           its weight and lull

pulls us, our past, into my inner ether
.          as I walk these roads without you

I’ve walked them from childhood
.                                          now they are changed

though you were never here
.                                          not here in these woods,

not on my tamped earth or marshlands,
.             your absence insists on its scope,

its filling of space, of sound,
.   .           pigeon-holed plans, tomorrows amiss

dark star, my Max, my once-light
.                                          how should I navigate

without you? I ask the sky
.                             a hawk stirs and launches

from a branch in the marsh
.                           just grazing my head

I bow, freeze, and gawk
.                             as her motion / body answers
.                             with its graceful weaving

becoming smaller as she fades
.                             into infinite silva

.

Koss (she/they/them) is a queer poet, writer, and artist with publications in Chiron Review, Mom Egg Review, Michigan Quarterly (Mixtapes), Cincinnati Review (miCro), Spillway, diode poetry, Five Points, Spoon River Poetry Review, MoonPark Review, Bending Genres, Prelude Magazine, and many others. Anthologies include Best Small Fictions 2020, Get Bent, Beyond the Frame, The Dead of Winter III, and many others. They’ve received numerous award nominations and won the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest. Their chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, is due out from Diode Editions in 2024.