Challenger

by Sunil Sharma / August 18th, 2019

A hawk circles
dives
scatters pigeons
like leaves before a gale.

The predator rises up
swoops down
perhaps stalking
or enjoying the fear
inspired by its talons, fierce.

Then a crow rises up
follows
mimics
the movements
till the predator
gives in and flies off
unsettled by an unlikely
single
challenger.

Poor pigeons!
they never realize
the power of numbers!

Sunil Sharma is an academic, critic, literary editor and author with 29 published books: Eight collections of poetry; five of short fiction; two novels; a critical study of the novel, and, 10 joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, two joint poetry collection and one joint fiction collection. Recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ Inaugural Poet of the Year award in 2012. Winner, among others, of the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence (2022) for the novel Minotaur. His poems were published in the UN project Happiness, The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, (2015). Read other articles by Sunil, or visit Sunil's website.

This article was posted on Sunday, August 18th, 2019 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.