Morning hawk

Morning hawk on a derelict barn catch the sun reddish on her breast. Puritan crows complain the driveway, flit from tree to tree to ground to strut. How quick and occasional favour of scraps became an expectation a habit to be demanded. She's on high alert now, breakfast is a thing we have in common, hunger, hers a more urgent affair. Mine a thing to be numbed by coffee delayed by choice; what will I have? what do I want? So unlike her, everything I eat dead long ago and far away as if shadow boxing karma makes a difference. So unlike her even at my age still not learned to fly. It was my mother taught me about small birds, names and feeding. She thought blue jays were bullies but I liked them for their colour and their secret sound. There was always bread saved for the birds, every morning coffee by the kitchen window she'd watch birds before the day began quiet days before there ever were siblings and sometimes we would watch together. My father was an Audubon man, the huge book of colour plates near as big as I was. Bald eagles with cat fish, great blue herons spearing frogs. But he made time to hang feeders filled with tiny seeds, teach us grackles, cow birds and spotted the first oriole we ever saw.