Peregrine chagrin

Hey, let’s hear it for Thursday!

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: Inspired by the work of Marianne Moore, try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts.

Oh yeah, I knew right away who my subject would be. It probably doesn’t surprise you either, if you know me. I’m a regular viewer of my beloved Carla (pictured, sitting on her clutch of FOUR eggs today) and Ecco on the National Aviary’s FalconCam, but I always have some mixed feelings watching them, like a human invader into a pure nature space — even though their nest is on a tall building near my office, and conservation methods have truly paid off for this population of birds that was threatened by pesticide use for years and years.

Pittsburgh Peregrine

Tilting
off the brink of a cliff
on the brink of extinction
then catching a miraculous 
comeback in honed talons

Here 
at home sea
-side turned city sky
-line, rocky nest to sky
-scrapers. And multiplying
flying by banded brothers,
at near-highway speeds
diving into urban vermin,
spectacle to your live
-streams.

Incubating
our clutch
of young,
of whom
you keep
careful
track