if i were a hawk

I’d hang out in the morning updraft above Rubio canyon. The creek is running again, after years of drought, and it attracts all sort of mammals perfectly sized for my consumption. Earlier, at dawn, this coyote pup came trotting up from the people neighborhood, all giddy from his own feasting on some pet, he stopped to have a slurp, his stomach so full he threw caution to the wind, forgot to look up and whoof! Benny and I shared a succulent breakfast. Benny’s my hunting partner. We’re stocking up energy, we’ve both got kids on the way, eggs in the nest, literally. Not that Benny needs to put on any more weight, he’s already hefty, which means he struggles in mild winds and over long distances, but when he dives on a prey, he’s got me beat every time. So he gets first dibs, but since his size allows him to pick out bigger targets it all evens out, there’s usually plenty to go around. We make a good team, he’s the muscle and I’m the brains.

Anyway, just because I’m a hawk doesn’t mean I’m hawkish; I only kill what I need to survive, nothing less, nothing more. It’s what I was built for, you know? The fun in it is just hanging out with Benny, who I have known since our first flying lessons, that and watching the bipeds walk up the mountain it takes us a mere two or three wing flaps to cross. I don’t get it. They’ve got machines, even ones that fly, and yet they flock to the mountains to climb them on foot, at considerable effort. They even bring their own food. I guess when you’re a biped that’s what you do: walk, but if I were in their shoes, I’d pick easier trails, flat ones. Watch me, no unnecessary movement, I let the elements do the work, follow the law of minimum effort. Hah! Look at them, trudging up the steepest ridge, like ants in their neurotic ceaseless dance to feed the colony.

Look at that guy in a bright yellow soccer jersey pointing a shiny device up at us? Grandpa used to tell us stories about humans pointing shiny objects at the sky, followed by sharp earsplitting noises, and friends of his falling to the ground, dead. Let me gain some altitude here, get within safe distance. Benny says we should skedaddle. He’s probably right. I wouldn’t want to end up dead, or worse, like Grandpa, in a cage.

Grandpa got caught because he was curious, and greedy, and a little blind in his older days. He was swooping around one day, on his daily morning constitutional, when he spotted this bleating lamb in the middle of a meadow in Griffith Park. He was a little hungry so he gained some altitude and went for it, only he hadn’t noticed the rope that extended from the lamb’s front right leg to a nearby sycamore, and the two uniformed parkies–park rangers–hidden under the tree. No sooner had Grandpa dug his talons into the lamb’s wooly skin that the parkies thrust a net over him. These days, when they catch you, most of the time they just tag and release you. You have to fly around with that stupid ankle bracelet, which is kind of embarrassing, but it doesn’t land you in a cage. Sadly, that’s where Grandpa finished his days, and those stories he told us, we had to listen to them through iron bars, when the rangers weren’t paying attention.

It wasn’t all bad though. One day, he said, this guy with a rumpled suit and a funny hat, carrying an odd size case, walked through the park early in the morning. He stopped and stared. Grandpa didn’t feel like being ogled, so he turned his back to the stranger. He heard him open the case and fought the itch to look back. A couple of minutes later a sweet sound filled the air. Instantly, the general cacophony of birds all around doing their morning routine ceased, even those pesky, and loud, green parakeets shut up. Grandpa couldn’t help it anymore, he glanced at the stranger over his shoulder. The man was holding a shiny, sinuous, horned object to his mouth, from which this tantalizing disturbance of the morning air emanated. At first the effect was plaintive, hurt. The player was still staring, only now Grandpa held his gaze. The space that separated hawk from Hawk–for I imagine it was the famous saxophonist Coleman Hawkins Grandpa was talking about–collapsed, reduced by the notes that flowed out of the instrument to an emotion, a flurry of emotions that was at once completely removed from the world and encompassing the whole universe. It spoke of pain, joy, betrayal, love, existence. Grandpa scanned the surroundings, looking for reactions from other caged birds but he couldn’t see any. He must have thought he’d died.Could this be what happens when your heart stops beating? But no, his pulse was strong, and not only that, it was magically in tune with the music. Hawk closed his eyes. A robin flew down from a nearby oak tree, to land on his shoulder. It started singing, as if in response to the horn, and Hawk in turn, responded, effortlessly moving through keys to join the robin in dialogue. Grandpa, the hawk, laughed; the kind of laugh that is infectious, indisputable and so profoundly real it echoes through time and the universe, maybe even into the far reaches of Rubio canyon, where a lone hiker, who’s just quenched his thirst from the raging creek, feels rather than hears a flutter and looks up at the misty morning sky. He recognizes the silhouette of a red-tail hawk, no, two hawks circling above him, rapidly gaining altitude.