Zero hour.

Zero hour

   Bittern, hawk, and osprey tend
   in their private circles near
   orders scrawled across the page,
   though the willing victims send
   postcards to another age
   gazing up in fear.

   Alligators known to dwell
   in the analytic root
   theorize about the will.
   Frequently consigned to hell,
   inconvenient villains still
   prepare to shoot.

   Will indignant vultures perch,
   waiting for the halt and weak
   on whose bounty they descend?
   In a large and vacant church,
   words whose meanings some defend
   have yet to speak.