Field Marks

He had salted the wings of the red-tailed hawk
to see what would become of them. Had stumbled on the bird

where it died. Where he was exploring a new trail.
He knows death. He was no taxidermist.

But he wondered what a crate of salt could do
to keep what he had found. The bird

in his palms took him back to the year
he learned how to look at field marks.

How to find the head of the bird in binoculars
and break it into quadrants with his eyes, extract

the top of the bill from the bottom and let them
stay that way: one sooty, one golden.  Hone in

on the cere, the flesh that holds the nostrils.
He remembers, now, the boy who didn’t

know the word cere. Didn’t even know
there was a part on the head of the bird

that needed a word like that one. The rush
he felt, that other parts might need names,

all that might be learned. He draws out the wing
base to tip and dips it in the salt

then scoops the thick crystals with his palms
to cover what he can. Every time he thinks of death

—train full of boulders on its track—he wonders
whether there are parts he will recognize.

---

Farnaz Fatemi is a poet, editor and writing teacher. Her poems and poem-essays have recently appeared in Grist Journal (ProForma prize for a poem-essay), Tahoma Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. A recent lyric essay was awarded the Honorable Mention for the Penelope Niven Prize for Non-fiction from the Center for Women Writers in 2018; another was a finalist for Best of the Net. Farnaz taught Writing for the University of CA, Santa Cruz, from 1997-2018. See more at farnazfatemi.com.