Fall and the Fullness

I have heard hawking rain that loves the wind
stretch his wings to the sky
and fall.  

I have watched the same hawk fold wings and dive,
and always his shadow falls,
a cry in the dropping wind.

Falling from high his shadow grows.
On stretching wings his shadow drives, 
and his cry climbs the climbing wind.

And the rain hawk departs to his craggy cloud,
but his cry returns on the wind.

                                    I

Borne on the wind in a passive rush,
my father loved
and having loved too much, he lost.

As a falcon loses whose shadow falls
and fills the night with dropping cries,
he lost and died;
his wounds that melt between melting trees
amid single dropping leaves.

Released the shadow his falling brought,
he opened not his eyes, 
nor loosed his tongue.
He, Samson, the shorn and harnessed one, 

having dropped in the dawn his dropping phrase,
withdrew and watched night lay her temple low,
retracing his fall in her falling.

Borne anew on the wind, he could never hear
the sound of his own unuttered phrase,
the words 
that had broken pillars down
and had intercourse with dropping stone,
the sun and sundry sun dried ways.

So my father loved a phrase of wind,
but, loving too much, he lost again.

                                    II

 His cup draining the dripping years
my father never emptied forth,
but listened for dripping sounds and hid

while the pressing, painted mouth passed on,
the mouth that in gulps would drink him down
and, having drunk, would not forget,
nor let the water longer drop.

My father feared tided rays.

Yet, much from all his sacred pourings
preserved a rapture green in time.
His dews rose up in early morning,
his showers refreshed the night.

And this same rapture, green and growing,
laid in tortured twist on twist 
the horning vine, my browning foliage.

For I was to blossom in his might, 
drink out his cup in my desert years.
In me, he felt his strength revive
and from this bud burst his white dream, 
a flower uttering red.

In this white dream my father lived,
his cup in this dream drank dry;
but he in his dreaming bloomed reddest red
and the color, driving, drove a red sky. 

                                    III

My father and his dropping love
moved mountains.

He grew this shore that scatters forth
dry pebbled light.

Yet he moved more softly than crustaceans move 
imbibing a salt rimmed rock.

And on the day my father died,
his wordless movement split the sea.

Bread swelled in the cleft of soured waters
though the sound of his fall barely uttered.

And the wind broke the loaf that headlands might eat, 
and the sun poured red in the evening.

And departing, my father rejoiced in this feast
that drank to his renewal.

For the bread wind breaks is his shadow that drives 
and red sky is his cry, returning.

                                    IV

I feel the rain hawk drop out of his cloud
and his wings split the night with beating.
I know his shadow retraces his cry,
and Lo! They embrace in the morning.