By Marc Harshman

Two falcons,
perched left and right
in a tall beech
on a single, dead limb
have just come
from seeing the world
and between them
catalog mice and voles,
sparrows and pigeons, compare
weather reports, climatic changes,
may even notice the state of
their feathers,
their gastro-intestinal tracts,
their children, their parents,
but just what they said
about us
who have likewise
been around the world
but who have not seen
as they have,
seen as their lives depend upon seeing
who have within them
the dead crystalline lakes,
who have spanned the horizons of flame forests,
have tasted poison in the electric smoke,
have measured their home
with a smaller tape each year,
of all this I can not speak
their words,
can not translate
but know only
that they know
and could they tell
I would not type another line,
nor you read another word,
for their deep knowledge
would stop us all --
it is this close, even now.

Marc Harshman is a long-time member of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy who lives in Marshall County. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Wilderness, Shenandoah and Alaska Quarterly Review, as well as the recent anthology WILDSONG: POEMS OF THE NATURAL WORLD (University of Georgia, 1998) A new collection of poems will be published this spring by the Mad Review press in Massachusetts. He is also the author of seven children’s picture books including THE STORM (Dutton, NY, 1995), a Smithsonian Notable Book for children. And eighth title is forthcoming from Cavendish Children’s Books in 1999. {