Furious love

This is for TJ’s Household Haiku prompt. I hope haibun is included. The poem is inspired by watching a sparrowhawk trying to catch a peregrine falcon that had stolen a fledgling from its nest in the church spire.

The prompt words are Well & Sweet.

Photo ©Dr Raju Kasambe

 

There are no words, just cries of rage to scream the injustice of it all. What images unfurl behind the yellow irised eyes of the hawk robbed of her young? Red rage or white-fluffed memories of wide-beaked young? I watch with feet anchored in the clay, the aerial tragedy of loss and grief, and rage and hunger, and instinctive urges. Perhaps the falcon has young of his own and makes no difference between the pigeon squab and the future raptor. His wing beats, smooth as water, steel and silver in the sun, twist and turn, a feathered cascade, to beat off the smaller bird. And all the while, the short, final stretch of life, the mother screams, heads lift to see, and the baby dangles, helpless from the peregrine’s claws. Does it strain to see its mother’s furious, desperate flight, and does it hope, even a little bit, that a mother will prevail against death?

Clear as well water,

the sky, silver-barred and plumed,

sweet as honeyed dusk.

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