Housatonic — The best walks are the lonely ones. If I’m fortunate, I might not see another soul. Mostly, I see only their tracks in the damp places, the only sign others have walked the ground I’m walking.
On a lucky day I find company in tense and kinetic hawks, soaring on the prevailing winds. I wish somehow to share their spirit, silvery and god-like. They are of another, wilder world ruled by a less benign and forgiving god than the one I’ve heard about. Hawks live only by their own strength and wit, by merciless talon, raw sinew and ripping beak. When there were gods, man lived much the same.
I was 10 years old when, at the old Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford, I watched a hawk in a 10-foot-square cage pounce on, kill, and rip to obscene pieces a foolish, bobbling pigeon that had somehow wandered into its enclosure.
Though caged, the hawk had lost none of its wildness. It is well we see such slaughtering. We are then able to separate our assigned poetic view of high-flying hawks with the deadly intent of their graceful circling.
The seeming tamed hawk of the old times sat astride a man’s gauntlet, a hood masking its arrogance. Once released and recovered, it had to be torn from its prey, then given tame meat from a man’s hand, while its kill was snatched away. If this thievery were not done quickly and well, the hawk would soon realize it had no need of its man and would not deign to serve like a dog.
Earthbound in the shadows beneath a now empty sky, I am just a man, and even more, a man who lives in a world from which gods are gone. The hawks’ presence is fleeting, but their image remains, making a simple walk special and conjuring a lifetime of memories and dreams.
