Hawk, Moon (55)

I hear an unusual sound, a familiarity that calls to me, and I look up. The Cooper’s hawk is sitting in the just-budding branches of the liquid amber, maybe eight feet above my head. I never would have known he was there is he hadn’t talked to me. It’s the first time he has. I trust he is the one who comes for our birds at the feeder. I haven’t seen him snag one yet, but twice now there was evidence of his success in the piles of feathers left behind and in the absence of birds. I stand still, talk to him in a quiet voice. And then behind him I see the moon suspended just above the ridge in the daylight sky. It seems to come into focus on its own, like turning the knob on binoculars. The waxing crescent, fat and polished white. Oh, I think, standing below the tree, the hawk and the moon. Both of you together.

The Third Loss (53)

Three white-crowned sparrows and a California towhee eat bird seed beneath the small ficus tree in my mother’s back yard. A spotted towhee runs out from his hiding place beside the house to join them, and his animated small self, his bright reddish orange and sleek black, so fresh and alive, remind me of the empty place in the pot of succulents where the dead spotted towhee used to lie, and my belly, full of echoes, hollows out.

Enthroned (51)

I sit down on the Adirondack chair, on the little raised deck like a dais, my bottom sliding over the wood, surprising and smooth as if it had been polished. (Now I want a chair like this.) I am on a ridge at Descanso Gardens, looking north over La Cañada and the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. I breathe, sigh, stretch my neck and shoulders, so tight these days. I try not to feel uncomfortable as people come into view and spot me sitting there. (I am so close to the intersecting paths.) I am glad when they all disappear again, and I remain. I rub my hands across the arms of the chair, soft against my palms. In the stillness of this almost-wilderness, I am the grateful, quiet queen of my domain.

Taken (50)

The tiny baby rat
and the spotted towhee
whose little dead bodies I’d placed
inside the pots of succulents
in my mother’s back yard
and for weeks and weeks
I honored
and brought flowers to and
loved with all of me
have disappeared.
I tell myself maybe
it was divine intervention
but I only feel sad
and somehow violated
on their behalf
and mine.

Emptied Nest (49)

I am grateful I got to see them
that one day
their two little heads
poking out of the nest
side by side
beaks to the sky
grateful the mama hummingbird
didn’t seem to worry about me
but as dear as it was
I can’t seem to separate my anguish
that mostly I missed
the whole thing
because I couldn’t be there
living by
my mango tree.

Tough Love (47)

I trim the bushes on my little road
tecoma, bougainvillea, Mexican birds of paradise
so wrong this time of year
but so needed
to repair the butchering done to them
in my absence and
without my permission.
Now I am ruthless, but
each cut is made with love.
(After, I wash them with the hose
and pray for new growth.)

Bird Bath (45)

The white-crowned sparrow
dunks his head
again and again
in the fresh bird water
all fluff and delight
an honor
to sit here
in my courtyard
watching.
What beats this?