animals eating and attacking other animals–but in the case of nuisance predators like crows, one often thinks they’re simply black cawing evil. Much like hawks swooping off with baby birds crying helplessly on their way to doom. A nasty destructiveness built into the natural system. But what would humans know about that kind of misbehaviour, certain world leaders, serial killers, et al, eh? Nature and humans both red in tooth and claw.
Mother’s Day Moment
After dinner and croquet
we sat happy, content
with ourselves
family and world
in the grey backyard
calm of twilight.
The whoosh and cries
came too sudden
for knowing–
the stillness broken
by necessity and
nature’s fact.
The cedar shattered
with absurd terror
as the hawk tore
a path to just one
unready sparrow.
He cleared the bush
in nano-seconds,
his unreal shriek
of triumph lifting
supper, arcing now
an indifferent sky,
the random babe
ripped out of
the only life it had
ever dumbly known.
‘What was that?’ we asked
‘hawk or merlin?’
But exactitude no
longer mattered
in that eerie birdless-hush,
as we turned once more
in private doubt, lost
for words, and resumed
our game of Scrabble.