Hawking an Acadian Poem

After I saw the ten hawks in the sky I knew I had to write a poem. But I had no idea where it would lead me until I started writing it. After I wrote the first line, I knew I needed to go somewhere mathematical with it. It wasn’t just the fact that I had seen a number of hawks in the sky. It was that number: ten. It's so accurate, precise. I've attempted to be somewhat the same in the language, which for me, in an Acadian poem, is an experience in itself.

Metrics of Hawks and Me

Ten hawks pass overhead
in random order, just
a temporary sum,
a magnitude that must
decline if hawks are true
to being hawks. A few

will start to separate
in circles like a cell
dividing from itself
itself, in parallel
geometries of chance,
a reckoned elegance

that leads me to this one
experience of flight.
Much later, on a peak
of granite, I will sight
a single hawk below
and measure vertigo.

If it had been three, maybe the poem would have gone on some spiritual journey. If it had been four, maybe it would have had more direction or at least some earth tones in it. If seven, maybe I would have been more fortunate with the outcome (although to be truthful I kind of like where it ended.) But ten cries for metrics, in content as well as form. So on this one I let the rhythm and the rhymes take me to where they wanted to go, which was to that other hawk sighting in a completely different manner.