A Hawk Soars

Today, as I was sitting at my desk at home, I spied a hawk flying close to and above my building.

It reminded me of the hawk I once spied last year hovering above the Golden Gate Bridge, gaze fixed upon its prey below, as I hiked from my place to the bridge along the Alta, Morning Sunrise and SCA trails.

Almost immediately dropping what I was doing. I jumped outside onto my balcony to watch it fly.

And there it was, soaring in the sky not too far above me, I watched it for a good long while in utter admiration.

The English Poet Ted Hughes used hawks as a allegory to human weakness and cruelty.

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

— “Hawks Roosting” by Ted Hughes

* in looking at the video, I now think the bird was instead a California Condor, not a hawk, but hey it’s a bird, not a plane!

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