Mercurial Red Tails flee men, their omnisicient eyes firing through to their wings to fly straight off, our threat furious in them as if they knew we too were killers, but not this morning when two, a mated pair, come skimming the field in a slicing cold early red morning, two throaty ones in low tight circles over a patch, falling now into this moment, one to block, one to chase a cutting-at-lean-angles rabbit blurring through mud and gnarled milkweed, into this moment of my trance when the closer hawk breaks off and glides to the fence post only yards away, unaware of my gaze and body caught beneath the low maple, and we look across, one to another for one second, two, before he lofts wildly, wings high and poised even now in my memory, an antidote to the history of men.
© Mike Wall
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