Our father liked to play a game. He would count each hawk preying, circling above veiny tree lines graying like shadows of industry.
There’s a redtail, he would say, look at its proud chest and talons of mastery. Our eyes searched for the creature, noses pressed to cool glass and 65MPH speed.
Sometimes we’d catch the bird with two eyes, one eye or none. Meanwhile, our father never took his eyes off the road, fixed on painted yellow lines stretching to heartlands down New York’s I-90 West.
With age my eyes became engaged, detecting the slightest movement peripherally. Rods in retinas distinguished plump plumes from leaflet tufts, razor beaks from thorny stags, white breast from
billowing plastic bags. My sideways scan of leafy fringe is an artifact of habit when traveling down state roads of this infra-structured nation. I search for evidence of its natural relation,
beyond all that is manufactured by the jelly- spine of convenience, beyond wheels spinning at deafening speed, beyond the grubby hands of greed. Still, our connection to place is still here and Earthly,
coexisting in delicacy, like the hawk’s nested-blend of twig and trash. I trust there is a chance for us yet, despite cloudy puddles of progress, despite integrity lost in capital gain, despite a forgotten native name.