Kurt Philip Behm

City Hawk

From the top of Penn Center

he chose his first victim

Twenty stories up

as the train rolls below

 

A solitary pigeon

breaks free of the pack

Its eyes focused downward

for scraps that might show

 

His wings ever silent

with talons extended

At over a hundred

he drops from the sky

 

The prey in his clutches

a nest on the spire

where eyas sit waiting

—their mouths open wide

 

(16th & JFK Boulevard-Philadelphia: May, 2022)