A Pocket of Resistance: The Hawk, a real one, and me

I should be asleep. i will arise in four or five hours to do what i used to do in ten minutes except it now takes almost two hours to leave the house. Our first tee time is 0700 and Navy security is screwing up again, so i must leave earlier than usual. 0515 should be a good time.

i will go the back way probably: down the 54 freeway, but exiting south on I-5, not North. Going North means traversing the Coronado-Bay bridge and with security not opening the carrier or ocean gates because security wants to take an early day off for the Labor Day weekend, the bridge will be hammered from all the civilians and Navy personnel who don’t get the early day off trying to get in the main gate only.

Stupid drives me crazy.

And then my lone remaining passion in sports has smacked me in the head…again. Vandy looked like…well, they looked like Vandy: almost good but not good enough. Another long season looms.

So i sit here, not quite ready to hit the rack, but needing to do just that.

And i scanned my documents on the computer. And i found the below. i think it fits my mood:

hawk, on the fourth

hawk, soaring above
the periphery of southern California
civilization on the Fourth,
majestic in his flying hunt.

so hey, mister hawk,
are you seeking
a field mouse or rabbit or my cat,
which now also stalks your canyons and laderas,
which are what the mexicans call hills
only a few miles south of this high desert
turned green by the water
pumped in from arizona?

hey, hawk, are you also
turning to scavenging garbage
like the coyotes
at the bottom of the gorge below my house,
and
like the crows
who share your street lamp perches?
or
do you only occasionally feed
off the dead rabbits
just a bit too late crossing
the newly asphalted road
leading up the hill?

i marvel at our audacity
to infringe on your domain, mister hawk,
as i walk with the dog over your range
before returning to my house behind the hill
where the farm house,
the lone structure within miles of here
for many years
but now surrounded by the tract homes,
the lone house with truck hulks,
rusting pieces of metal and machinery
lying about
on the few remaining houseless acres
not yet leveled
by the graders of the development men.

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