Red Tail

" Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?"

from Some Questions You Might Ask

by Mary Oliver

Red-Tail flying

" the plane gained more height and broke through the clouds and reached the great transparency of the sky.  It occurred to him that the sky is an emptiness that sits on a layer of cotton wool and has no limit, an ungraspable manifestation of the mystery...,":

from The Blond Baboon
by Janwillen van de Wetering

Bald Eagle and Red Tailed Hawks?

 Saturday while on the Thickwood Hills Studio Trail I noticed a Bald Eagle being harassed by what I think are a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks. I am used to seeing crows and blackbirds harrassing larger birds but not one raptor after another which is why I am sharing the not great photos. Lyrics from John Denver's The Eagle and The Hawk.

(again sorry about the spacing)

"I am the eagle

I live in high country

In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky"

"I am the hawk

And there's blood on my feathers

But time is still turning they soon will be dry"

                                     

"And all those who see me

And all who believe in me

Share in the freedom I feel when I fly"

Sounds

"What a long journey that will be! You'll need some nourishment." she cried handing Milo a small brown package, neatly wrapped and tied with a string. "Now remember; they're not for eating, but for listening, because you'll often be hungry for sounds as well as food. Here are street noises at night, train whistles a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, creaking bedsprings, and, of course, all kinds of laughter. There's a little of each, and in far-off lonely places I think you'll be glad to have them." (164)

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Trip to Shellbrook for drinking water pump ( & breakfast) deer, hawk, blackbird amid blue sky day. Hawk and Blackbird.

"Snow melts into the earth and a gentle breeze 
Loosens the damp gum wrappers, the stale leaves 
Left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass. 
The sky shakes itself out. And the invisible birds 
Winter put away somewhere return, the air relaxes,"

Taking the gravel shortcut back to the cabin we stopped to look at ducks. Instead, my attention was attracted by the drama above the slough. Most of the hawks we see on our trips are Red-Tailed Hawks, and this spring they are often being harassed by smaller birds, in this, case a maile Red-Winged Blackbird. I am always impressed that birds can shed so many feathers, as this hawk has and remain airworthy. 

"Moments go when summer comes and turns this all into a garden? 
Spring here is too subdued: the air is clear with anticipation, 
But its real strength lies in the quiet tension of isolation 
And living patiently, without atonement or regret, 
In the eternity of the plain moments, the nest of care 
—Until suddenly, all alone, the mind is lifted upward into 
Light and air and the nothingness of the sky, 
Held there in that vacant, circumstantial blue until, 
In the vehemence of a landscape where all the colors disappear, 
The quiet absolution of the spirit quickens into fact, 
And then, into death."

both quotes from The Late Wisconsin Spring
by John Koethe

Departure

"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. 

 His wing 

Scythes down another day, his motion 

 Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear 

The crashless fall of stalks of Time."

from Evening Hawk

by Robert Penn Warren