hawks are birds of prey

I have been dreaming of and seeing hawks.

It all started the last night I hung out with R.((or whatever his name really was)) I noticed that he had put up this huge owl (sculpture? feathery thing? wooden carving? Not sure: his house was so dark I couldn’t really see it clearly enough to tell how it’d been fashioned, just that it was a big white owl) on a perch near the ceiling.

I asked him about it and he told me some elaborate narrative about how they were his spirit animal. He said that he always knew when he was on the wrong path because he’d begin seeing numerous hawks, he’d spy them everywhere, intruding into suburban settings and soaring above in wild places. As he spoke I thought of summer in Michigan, all the hawks I had seen swooping down and plucking rodents from yards and streets, I kept stopping my car to try to stop them from killing the little voles and chipmunks, but they’d always whisk the prey up and out of my reach. I felt so helpless. I had the feeling that the sudden incursion of hawks into my suburban summer idyll was some sort of message that I was incapable of comprehending.

R. continued with is description saying that if he had made a change and was moving in the right direction he’d begin seeing eagles, many eagles. He said he’d seen hundreds in his lifetime.

Finally he would know that he had made the change and was in harmony with the universe because he’d begin seeing owls. He’d see them often and in odd places. He claimed to have seen an enormous snow owl once in the middle of the desert.

The next morning, when I left his house, while I was waiting for the frost on my windshield to melt, a huge owl flew from one branch to another in the wooded area across from his house. It was very strange to see it, I cannot recall ever seeing an owl on my hometown before. I stood and looked at it for a long time, but it had its head turned away from me. It gave me a curious feeling.

It was that night that I had a strange dream. I was on my dad’s back porch and I was watching two adorable black squirrels play in a woodpile. A hawk suddenly appeared and I knew it intended to take one of them as prey. I made my heart ache to think of one being picked off, and the other being alone, so I decided to scare the hawk away. But the hawk was very bold. It swooped down right in front of me and slid under the woodpile. I became agitated and poked a stick at it, hoping to scare it away before it hurt one of the squirrels. It came out from under the pile and was obviously very annoyed with me. It flew to a perch on the roof where it could watch for the squirrels, it obviously intended to wait until later. My heart was beating because I knew that though I had saved them this time, the hawk was waiting to pick one of them off and leave the other alone. I tied a rope to one of the beams of the house and swung up toward the place where the hawk was trying to hit it, or frighten it away but it just sat still and I imagined that it wanted to fly at my stomach and gore me with its beak Then I woke.

I started seeing them in my waking life in conspicuous places. One afternoon in a very crooked and weathered lone tree beside the highway, I spied one just looking about, huge and menacing. Then on another day, one was swooping in circles over the roof of the building I work in. By the time I parked my car, it had disappeared. Another morning as I was driving to work, a big truck passed in front of me with the word hawk printed next to an ominous black silhouette of a bird in flight.

The night before last I dreamt of another hawk. I was in the upper window of an apartment with a hardwood floor and a balcony. I was with an elegant and gentle older man (think: glass of brandy, silk cravat, smoking jacket and brocade slippers) and he was telling me about the myriad birds who were flying around outside the window and landing on the building across the street. I saw beautiful green parrots and many stunning little sparrows and wrens playing I was delighted and happy, but then a hawk swooped in and landed on the roof directly across from me. I wanted to throw a rock at it, I imagined that I was a master with a slingshot and could dash its brains. I wanted to do it harm, all of my defenses intensified and went on alert. But somehow I knew that it, with its mysterious calm, was the one who could do me harm and not vice versa.

the Justo Experiment

I have stalked before, but not for my own crush, only as an assistant to stalking; an accessory. You see, my friend Claire once, crushed hard for a much older South American man named Justo.She used to work at the library in our small town, it was the summer before our first year of college, I think. Anyway, she would read all the books Justo had checked out, watch the films he watched, finally she got bold and snuck a peek at his address. We started taking huge armloads of gladiolas, angel food cakes and gumball machine toys to his doorstep under cover of darkness. Claire and I would meet outside her parent’s house, I’d park down the street, and find her in the yard. We had to have been 18, I was free to do as I pleased, but she still had to sneak out. I think I was even driving my dad’s van for part of that time so, being really terribly conspicuous, she’d sneak out we’d meet in the fragrant summer night with our nightgowns on and long impractical strands of flapper beads, the silliest silky nighttime get-ups, too much perfume, all around the eye pink and gold glittery eye-shadow. Equal parts comical and glamorous. We’d go to the grocery store (which is now the Christian teen center) and buy flowers and cakes, laughing like fools and then we’d walk to his house, crickets harping and stars dropping out of the dark sky. His place was actually very close to hers, in a bank of condos a few blocks away.In Justo’s neighborhood, we’d traipse around the man-made frog ponds trying to peek in his windows, giggling soundlessly with smiles crushed into one another’s shoulders, it was the most fun two straight-edge girls could have in a small town at the witching hour. We did it for a long time, Weeks? Months? I tried to imagine him (I’d never actually laid eyes on the man, I was just in it for the adventure). She described him as lush and warm looking, bittersweet chocolate hair, dark-honey skin. What must he have though in the morning as he discovered mysterious gifts on his doorstep? I can only imagine.I recall one night when a random teenage ruffian, who we later discovered was Claire’s sister’s friend’s brother called Chet, chased us through the neighborhood in his car: us hiding behind fences and trees, climbing huge fences in the aforementioned impractical long nightgowns and flapper beads, him revving the engine and inspiring quickened heartbeats and thrilled terror. Oh, the feeling of being safe at home after the chase through dark dewy lawns with motion-detecting lights turning on and alerting him to our location, causing us to run hand-in-hand to the next potentially safe shadow, while he revved and flashed his brights at us.Claire went away to school and we continued our Justo experiment when she was home at the weekends. Eventually, (though, I cannot recall the details of how) Claire actually met the man and confessed that we had been leaving the gifts for months. He was obviously mad about her, she was young, impossibly bright and terribly lovely and had been enlivening his lonesome life for months. Giving him odd surprises that no-doubt filled his days with mysterious joy. We began going to his house and lounging around on his couch, like a couple of drowsy kittens, over-perfumed, heavily costumed, late at night. He must have been going wild with desire but we were unaware of our power to captivate and torment, it was not yet obvious to us that as we hugged and kissed one another’s glittery powdered cheeks, ran our fingers through one another’s hair in the dim light of that new-smelling condo, that Justo must have been near-crazed with desire. We were decidedly oblivious to the idea that our sweet and perfect Siamese-sister adoration of one another could be misconstrued as some kind of erotic posing. We must have brought such strange excitement to his nights, when I imagine the scenes from his perspective, our silly stories and playful word games must have seemed otherworldly. I'd play my favourite character: the pretty jaded girl who was comically unlucky in love, telling dismal tales of betraying boys as Claire cooed and tangled my curls around her fingers letting her long straight lashes fan her lightly freckled cheeks. We’d come to his place dressed up like 50s housewives in false eyelashes, aprons, fishnets and crinoline and make elaborate meals for him. We’d weave tales that could not have made sense, but must have been enchanting. I seem to recall Claire sitting on his lap Lolita-style, though I am not sure if this really happened. I see her pulling at a lock of her soft golden hair blinking those enormous Scorpio eyes. Him looking fatherly. Watching her with enthralled fascination. Justo was rather short, with glossy black curls, beautiful beetle-dark eyes and ridiculous tan plastic boots. His accent was luscious. Lulling. It seems obvious to me now that this could not have ended well. Adults expect that this sort of play will end in sex, and I suppose that we knew this on some level. I had a lover of my own and I know I spoke far too candidly of my pervy poet and our tangled romance to truly believe that Justo thought we were innocent girls. We must have simply been fantasizing ourselves innocent, because neither of us actually was. Still, when Justo began to expect sex from Claire we both bristled, the fun was over and he had become a predator. She was insulted that he’d become lecherous and I believe that I too, was genuinely surprised that it had come to that, though it seems so natural now. Eventually the whole thing ended when Justo was leaving to move back to South America. We went to his nearly-empty condo to say goodbye and found him pacing nervously. The atmosphere was tense and unpleasant, none of the warmth of the early times. He seemed angry that I had come and Claire became convinced that he had planned to rape her or kill her and that my presence had come as an infuriating intrusion. We left feeling that dark feeling that comes from walking, unharmed out of a situation where things could have gone very badly. We left feeling disturbed. And to this day, when I think of that phase, it seems like it was golden and sweet at the onset but chilly and disturbing at the end. I never asked her if she heard from him after that night. I don’t recall her ever mentioning it.