A red-tailed hawk soars and circles
above the tall trees and silent fields
looking down for movement, for prey.
Gray clouds press against nearby mountains.
From another direction the sun lights up
the fields and mountainside.
Somewhere in an innocuous, but not innocent,
place in the United States of America,
a young military technician stares intently
at a computer screen. He operates
the remote control of a predator drone flying
softly above houses in a far away country,
namely Pakistan, but it could be any country
on the planet.
The predator drone is armed with precision missiles
that the young technician from the land of the free
releases near the target he has been given. People die.
They are not always the right people. Sometimes
they are children. Sometimes the information
is wrong, the coordinates are mistaken.
The red-tailed hawk glides on currents of thin air,
then dives toward earth, talons at the ready.