When you told me the falcon

no longer resided

above the university parking lot

I was disappointed.

 

The only wild animals I had seen

since we left Minnesota

were the drunken raccoons

on their nightly raids to pick

chicken bones out of our landlord’s trash—

you insisted they were rabid,

we were the drunk ones.

Or the feisty grey squirrel

that jumped headfirst into my side

startling me,

loosing anarchy upon the world,

as I walked to work one morning.

Or the ornamental pigeons

that decorate the sidewalks

Jackson Pollock style—

despite the fact that I’ve never seen

a baby pigeon.

 

When you told me the falcon

no longer resided

above the university parking lot

I was disappointed.

 

New York City—

her gaze blank and pitiless as the sun—

smells like hot garbage,

and I haven’t found my muse

because writing poetry

about hot garbage smell

is surprisingly hard—

Who knew?

Fresh air can’t be replaced

by taller buildings

and brighter lights

(and especially not by hot garbage).

 

When you told me the falcon

no longer resided

above the university parking lot

I thought I was going crazy.

 

Wasn’t that a falcon’s cry,

I heard faintly

through the window,

over the fiddle meandering

through my headphones,

or just wishful thinking?

We stepped out for a smoke break—

I couldn’t focus

so I joined you.

It landed on the stone smokestack

looming above the parking lot

just as I looked up.

If I crane my neck,

I can see it perched

high outside the office window

until darkness drops again but now I know,

I can write a poem about hot garbage.

 

Julia Brown has her master’s degree in English with a focus on medical humanities and medical writing from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. She has previously published poetry in Adjacent Pineapple. Currently, Julia is writing freelance and teaching writing and literature at Queensborough Community College and City College in New York.