The poem is a sonnet but doesn’t follow a set meter. It has a conversational pattern, which is interesting. It reads like a slam poem that is divided into structure. The back-to-back anaphora in the first line, "morning morning's" followed by the noun, "minion" starts the poem of with an easy rhythm that is natural to the tongue. The poet uses alliteration and rhyme throughout, which gives a bouncy feel to the poem. The line, “king-/ dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,” exemplifies this. The experimentation of verse is incredible, but I think it distracts from the poet’s clarity.
The intention of the poem, I assume, has something to do with the speaker’s contemplation of the physical world, which is understood by watching a bird defy natural order.
I find it interesting that you find the alliterative language in here to be natural, it appears self-effacing because it resembles sonnet form, but I found that reading over those repetitions really slowed me down. One theory I've seen bouncing around is that the alliteration is intended to suspend the readers speech and mimic the windhover. I thought that the dedication was most confusing because the poem isn't openly involved with something religious (aside from the dedication); however, as I type this it seems to me that the speaker sees Christ (or himself) in the bird. Himself because of his mastery of verse, but Christ because as a mortal man he breaks natural order of things.
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