A shadow moves
across my mother’s back yard
and I look up in time to see
the papa hawk in hunch mode
heading west.
I stand up
from my chair in the corner
and the mama hawk is there
and as she circles the neighbor’s big tree
whose name I need to learn
the one where the ravens like to sit
I see the waning half moon is there, too
and we are all of a piece
the moon
the hawk
the tree
and me.
I stop in the entryway
stand on the bricks
wait for my mother
looking out the open front door
without seeing
and then I am watching
three house finch
on the garage roof
playing musical chairs
with the corner
but quiet
and I am breathing now
grateful they brought me back
and for their joy.
Back yard corner of my mother’s home, hot tea in hand, time just before my writing class to drink it, to soak up the small arm of these foothills that wraps itself around the cul-de-sac here. If I could be anywhere in the world I might choose to be beneath the down blankets in my Palm Springs bed, the San Jacintos spread before me, the white crowned sparrows making their quiet sounds beneath the bougainvillea in the corner of the courtyard and the sense that my mother was well and sleeping at home with her cat. But this corner is good, too, my pen moving across the page, the sun just high enough now in the southern sky to send shafts of light through the leafless branches of the liquid ambers. I sip my yerba maté and pray, a kind of almost-peace descending.
There is this little bird who comes to the corner of my mother’s back yard where I sit in the mornings when I can. Today she is poking around the pots of succulents looking for bugs, her white and gray and black and flashes of yellow vivid in the early sunlight. I watch her dart about, sip my yerba maté, warm cup cradled in both hands. I’ve only ever seen her by herself, and I wonder again today if she is all alone. I say metta for her. May you be safe and free from harm. May you have everything you need to thrive. May you be happy. May you have companionship if you want it. On the last wish, I can’t help thinking, oh, to me our companionship is dear. Later, I finally find her in my bird book, a yellow-rumped warbler. And, too, once I know what kind of bird she is, I see another of her species approach her. Scolding? Wanting sex? I haven’t seen her since, but I’m still hoping she’ll be back.
I walk back down the hallway
to my room
and there is Venus rising
big and bright above the ridge
the sky just now growing light.
Again, this unlooked for gift
sweet recompense
for interrupted sleep
echoes of the last day of our year
a triad now of blessings.
This morning there is sun. It’s cold for southern California, and glorious after three days of steady rain. I feed the birds in my mother’s back yard, put up the lime green umbrella in my far corner, dry my edge of the white slatted table and the two chairs I use. I look up at the ridge and west across the valley, one of those rare days in L.A. where the air is clean and fresh. My tea is still steeping, so after I am set up in my corner of the back yard I head out the front gate to get the newspapers. I hear a hawk and look up in time to see her launch herself from Aida’s redwood, arc right above me, fly up the road to another tree. I talk to her from where I stand. Then a second call, a second launching right above me, and her mate flies southwest, disappears. He surprises me even more. Both of them! Had they been there all along, and I was just oblivious? The mama hawk flies back to Aida’s tree. It is the closest I’ve been to her when she wasn’t in flight. I talk to her. She listens, preens a bit. It feels comfortable, almost ordinary. We have a history together, she and I, one that mostly feels like a dream to me now. But I know in the core of me what happened was real. I don’t say it out loud right now, but she knows how much I love her. I just stand there looking up, wishing I could see her eyes. If she is broadcasting to me I am too dumb today to pick it up. But I know she loves me, too. It is an enduring source of awe for me, that this can be true. I stand still after she leaves, calling out once more. I am mute now, humbled, grateful. And I am all filled up with her, my unexpected red-tailed hawk friend.
I watch my lizard friend
cross the pavement
and stop
intent
and then I see the bee
flailing on his back.
Still, I do not expect
the lizard’s swift strike
or his fierce gobble.
No Holds Barred 