Hawks of autumn

Each new fall the hawks of autumn appear queerly sooner in skies surprised by early moldering grays, colors customarily kept in winter's faded paintbox. Hawks of autumn, flecks on a gray vault, even before whole limbs yellow, only branch tips splashed overnight by some riding vandals' spray cans - day's greens aerosoled over quicker than we can name the shade.

Each new fall the hawks of autumn soar ever higher on updrafts spawned by obscurer blows from groundswells new in their graying green, more squirrel-scarred and leaf-swatched than we knew there were animals, trees, or seas enough to do it.

Each new fall the hawks of autumn swoop profounder down, their prey a wingspanned time gyring wider than ever in any dead fall before.