HAWK
                    By David Rowbotham

 
        The hawk dived in his body to reach hers.
        She felt it strike and then begin to pick.
        Her convulsion was the epitome of quick
        flight: what the hawk did made her seizure his.
        Her body was the perch and prey of an exquisite
        homing: his in the hawk of precipitous hunger,
        hers in the talons of unerring visit,
        and the body of both in the weight of love as anger.
        This was the sum that cried and hunted hunger.
        This was home for an instinct old as the sun
        searching out the planets to give them light
        among particles that slammed the dark like rain;
        and both along their sinews felt the weight
        of the hunt about to slacken, and the hawk struck again.



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* Published in The Weekend Australian (Review, October 27-28, 2001, Page 8), this poem, according to email from Manager Gail Cork, was described as “wonderful” by Members of the Literature Board of The Australia Council when the Board’s retiring Chairman, the writer and W.A. Supreme Court Judge Nicholas Hasluck, drew the Board’s special attention to it. In a quick personal note to the author, Nicholas Hasluck delivered the accolade: “Just a note to congratulate you on Hawk, one of the most memorable poems I have read for many years.” It was considered a remarkable achievement by many of its readers, who phoned and visited the author, now 77, at his home. Nicholas Hasluck was one of the visitors, before the poem was written. He reported on his meeting with the author to the Literature Board, and paid tribute to him as one of the Board’s “adornments”. As announced by a past Board Director, Tom Shapcott, in 1989, David Rowbotham was awarded a lifetime Emeritus Fellowship by the Board in recognition of his “contribution to the National Heritage”. – Brisbane, Australia, December 25, 2001