She took the hawk wing
and spread it
slightly from the shoulder
down, from the bend
of the wing to the lesser
coverts, from the primary coverts
to the tertials, to the carpal edge.
The bird was dead
to begin with, found
splayed over the white
line of Arnold Drive. She was not
scared of death, she took
the bird in like a stray
thing that needed warmth
and water. She pulled it apart
to see how it worked.
She nailed the wing
to her studio wall.
She told me not to be
scared. I watched
and learned to watch
closely the world.
Ada Limón is the author of Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, Sharks in the Rivers, Bright Dead Things, The Carrying, The Hurting Kind, and Startlement: New and Selected Poems. Her two children’s picture books are And, Too, the Fox and In Praise of Mystery, and she is the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She received a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship and served as a two-time poet laureate of the United States from 2022 to 2025. Limón lives in Sonoma, where she is originally from.
