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.