A Review of Peter Wayne Moe’s Touching This Leviathan

By Jonathan Frey

Once, we found a kestrel on a field edge. We were walking the dirt road that intersected a thousand acres of wheat, and the kestrel lay there on the margin, wings splayed. My wife picked him up, spread his wings, found beneath the downy chest the thrum of a heartbeat. She handed him to me, and it was like holding a breath in my hand. I had looked at many books about birds, admired paintings of kestrels from Audubon to Sibley. I had identified them atop utility poles b...