*****
Pam had a fascination with hawks. I often wondered what it was she loved, and if in part she was longing for the freedom of flight and the perspective one gets from a bird's-eye view of the world. Just a few weeks ago on her birthday, I arrived at church to find a hawk perched atop a car in the parking lot. It stayed long enough for me to snap a couple of photographs before it moved on.
Evening Hawk
by Robert Penn Warren
From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
Read the poem in its entirety.
I'll leave you today with this parting shot.
In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo's messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the ancient Egyptians and, in the case of the Lakota Sioux, embodiments of clear vision, speed and single-minded dedication. — John BurnsideThank you for reading. I hope to see you here again tomorrow.
I, too, am slightly obsessed, maybe just with birds of prey. I can hear them, screeching sharply, in our big trees out back, and find the song birds going ominously quiet a sign of them. I like the idea of them far above us: life, with a view. Perspective is always something necessary that we rarely get, from living down here among our messes.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid I memorized Tennyson's poem about the hawk He claps the crag with crooked hands... and felt myself very erudite (probably much like Tennyson). This poem is even better.