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.