CAROL ALEXANDER

Habitat Lost

Hawk hectors, craving flesh of our small dog.

 In its brush with a sparse beech tree, it flies off-kilter

adrift from the watershed, land of staunch firs.

Bird, hankering, cannot eat stones or the seeds

flung down for more equable squirrel or wren.

Dog's ears flatten, back ridged in a ruff;

something caustic in the red-tail's eye,

but again a wing scathes the tree as hawk recalibrates

the sweet summer air among provisional green,

having half-forgotten flight, gliding like a bat

or a listing kite among the alley of leaves.

Daft in its hunger, daring more and more,

the bird, I think, senses a depth of awe

mortal-made: we too have wandered far

to quell a hunger, haven't yet encountered

passage so vexed as has this aching bird of prey.

Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hat Lit, Mobius, Poetica, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Her work has twice been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013). New work appears in Caesura (Poetry Center San Jose), Poetica, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Split Rock Review, and Clementine Poetry Journal.