Rapt

From the twenty-first floor, peregrine falcon watches

the cranes poised to start the day, the silent slide

of light on glass, the cityrise

at dawn, a blueprint pinned

across grey skies, by noon a work in progress,

nightfall an altered palimpsest.

High up on the concrete cliff, she tends

her scrape, the mottled eggs laid in shell

and feather, searches the cityscape

for the expected guest, then shoots out

soundless on a swoop, a piece of slate-grey

torn off a rooftop, flown back up

to wildness, wilderness.

Past banks of glittering eyes,

she dives and rises with the feathered body

in her beak, its heart still beating.

She blinks, surveys her domain, sees its glaciers.

In her eyes the River Fleet still makes its way

down Farringdon Street to meet the Thames.

She waits in a great silence, greater than

the unstarred sky. She blinks again.

The moon comes up behind the sleeping cranes

and the city is not lost, but rapt,

making space for love to hatch.