A Cast Of Hawks

The hawk is awake before I am. He has taken up residence in our tree, and built a roomy nest. My senses have yet to become truly engaged. Then I hear him, the morning crier heralding the new day as I prepare my coffee. His cool eyes survey the pre-dawn landscape, while he searches for worthy prey. I harness the dogs for our walk, and discern the signal-and-response between him and his mate.

The dogs and I tread over well-worn ground. Their noses twitch as they drink in the scents borne on morning breezes, or that linger on the ground. When we pass by certain houses, the dogs that live there notify us pointedly that we do not belong. We venture more than a mile from our house, establishing that these areas are, to us, an extension of our territory. At this great distance from home, I can still hear the hawk, his exclamations cleaving the air.

All the birds have been awakened, and their song fills my ears. Crows murder the calm with throaty wheezing, and hummingbirds chirp in a language like morse-code. My thoughts flitter and drift, accepting of subjects capricious and incidental. I actively hope our hawks find the pocket gophers that infest the underworld on our little plot. I hope they swoop down and tear their limbs off.

Our pocket gophers have developed a keen taste for flowering plants. The blue wildflowers I sowed near the fence. The sunflowers that were destined to greet us through our bedroom window. And the California poppies, white ones and orange ones and a sea of yellow ones. I am tormented by their loss.

As I type this, the Tournament of Roses Parade is promenading down Colorado Blvd in Pasadena. The floats are mechanized, yet every bit on display is from a living thing. All sorts of crushed seeds, ground up leaves, and flowers of every variety, plucked in peak bloom. I always considered The Rose Parade to be "my" parade, since La Canada is one town over. Girls from our high school were always in the Royal Court, and several of the Queens were classmates of mine.

After the parade has passed, the floats are driven to a lot where they can be viewed. As the blooms wilt and fall off, they stand monument to a parade all their own, a parade of those would drink in their startling visual beauty and inhale their fading redolence.