“Peregrine” by John Muro

You have forged a habitat from our own,
Reclaiming the deformed spaces carved
Into air; canyon walls of steel and concrete
And clouds drifting past in blue panels of glass.
All captured in the cold precision of your eyes,
Round and dark as rifle barrels, straddling
A lethal beak and talons of caution-yellow.
Everything about you shouts assassin, and so
The Egyptians fittingly named a deity after
You – Horus, god of vengeance – with
Gold flesh and plumage of flint blue and
Graywacke. And now, wandering falcon,
Urban sentinel, I watch you scale heights
In terrible torque becoming little more than
A pinprick; awaiting the hunting stoop when
You become an instrument of carnage folding
Back a tail as large as your body, and wings
Tucked using tears to shield divining eyes
From wind shear. Tercel diving in dominion
Like a trident blistering air and consuming
Space faster than sound to where death itself
Is dazed and abducted in a theater of raw conquest.

John Muro is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. His professional career has been dedicated to environmental stewardship and conservation, and he has held several executive and volunteer positions in those fields. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published last fall by Antrim House and is available on Amazon. His poems have been published or will soon be published in Euphony, Clementine Unbound, Freshwater, Amethyst Review and elsewhere. John is a life-long resident of Connecticut.