"The Hawk lay on the road all day
like a small demon in love with the earth

Its plumed fingers strummed the dust
when drunken winds went shuffling past

As if a question had been asked
by this hard mouth that gaped
from a gargoyle's face turned up
while the sun's bronze tongue
lingered on the broken neck

The hawk was there that evening
So I stopped and moved it
to the grass

It was barred with black and brown
and grey, and in the talons
clutched and locked

There was a field mouse
also dead, also amazed"


-"The Question," by Sid Marty, the nearest thing Canada has to Robinson Jeffers. A trip to Alberta isn't complete without a visit to the Marty household, and a climb up Center Peak with his son Paul, one of my life long friends.