The poem is about a peregrine hawk chasing pigeons. At first I didn't know what a peregrine was. Then someone told me it was a kind of hawk. So I thought, “Cool—a bird.“ I like painting birds. They're one of my favorite subjects. You can paint them very expressively.

The poem alone brings to mind lots of images. I chose to portray hawk minus the pigeons. Someone suggested I show the hawk tearing the pigeons up. But I thought that would be distasteful. And to have a bunch of pigeons in the background would have been redundant. It wasn't really necessary. The image was focusing more on the city of Syracuse.