The hawk stood in the mockingbird’s feathers
like the pistil of a flower, or the inverse
of a missile crater, and lifted the body away
when it saw us returning from our walk.
Then we walked around the circle of down,
tail, and wing feathers, careful steps as if
the dead bird might still have been in there,
the soul stunned but intact on our lawn.
Our ghosts surely don’t follow the body, surely
they return, once they’ve shaken off the daze