Challenger

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 Toronto-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 23 published books: Seven collections of poetry; four of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, nine joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award---2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015. Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA. For more details, please visit here Read other articles by Sunil, or visit Sunil's website.