The first time I saw the red-tailed
hawk rise from the floor
of the valley, I parked my car
to watch him turn
the sky above. Late March, ’58.
In my old Ford
for the first time, I wandered
the back roads
finding orchards of plum and almond
in blossom.
The passing clouds revised the light
as it slipped down
the soft hillsides. To myself I said,
“This is magical.”
The whites and greens deepened
as colors under water
or oils do while the trees rose
into a still sky
and stayed there. I closed my eyes
to count slowly: one,
two, three, in the hope the scene
would calm. When I
opened them a tiny ground squirrel
crossed the road
to disappear in the thin shade
of before noon.
The kit fox, hunched and frozen,
the bob cat—with small
flattened ears—hunched inside
the salted wind,
the tree rat groping from branch
to branch, I hadn’t
found them yet. What had I found?
Duck weeds rising
from the burned shoots and remnants
of the great drought,
a hint of fire where the new grass
descended toward
the river, broken into black pools,
its drowned cargo
invisible as the noon light flooded
everything.
Small quick birds dropped from nowhere
to skim the orchards,
birds without names. I didn’t know
my own world.
I still don’t. Today the hawk rose
from the same field,
clouds blew in from the sea, the hills
darkened slowly
into afternoon. If I looked I’d see
the sky slowly turn
as always, once, twice, until I stopped
looking and turned
for home, wherever that might be.
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