The girl seems to fly
the hawk above her, a kite of feathers
and flesh and bones. She doesn’t feel
the invisible string in her hand
but must hold it. When she runs,
the hawk-kite sails with her.
When she stands still in the field,
he hovers above her, projecting
his shape like a haunting, an overlay
of feathers printed on her skin.
Wearing the black lace of another’s
shadow all the days of her life
changes her. The girl looks down
at her own pale arm and sees wings.
Maggie Smith is the author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful (Atria, 2023); Goldenrod (Atria, 2021); Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (Atria, 2020); Good Bones (Tupelo, 2017), named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo, 2015), winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; and Lamp of the Body (Red Hen, 2005), winner of the 2003 Benjamin Saltman Award. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, Smith has also received six Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
