The Seahawks: Prepared to Swoop & Kill

The Seakhawks sweep down on Green Bay

The Seakhawks unload on Green Bay

Sports Saturday

Many people are predicting that the Seattle Seahawks will be the first team since the Patriots to win back-to-back Super Bowls, and Thursday night’s drubbing of a good Green Bay team appears promising in this regard. Here’s a poem about a hawk unleashing its “legion of boom” upon the other birds at a bird feeder. Imagine them as the other NFL teams.

Here’s the thing about the NFL, however. Like those other birds, the other teams will learn to adjust, and the mayhem we anticipate Seattle causing won’t necessarily continue on. They will weather Seattle’s attacks, at least somewhat, “scattering into the thinning trees” and then reassembling. Not all of them will have their necks snapped like the junco. They will regroup to eat their small measure in the fading light of Sunday afternoons.

Feeding the Birds

By Robert Cording

I wanted to do something
   After the sharp-shinned hawk
     Swept through my utopia

Of feeders–each one filled
   With seeds for all kinds
     Of birds–and snapped the neck

Of a junco pecking about
   On the ground, content to eat
     (or so it seemed) what fell

From the beaks of purple finches.
   For weeks my two-year-old had
     Named cardinal and goldfinch,

Chickadee, titmouse, nuthatch,
   The feeders gathering them
     From the reddening maples

Where starved leaves drifted away
   From their branches, nights colder,
     The sky rehearsing for winter.

I’d often sit at the window,
   Pleased by the way goldfinches
     Yellowed the air as they waited

For their turn or purple finches
   Dropped from the shed roof
     One after another. Even the jays–

Over-sized, bullying, loud-mouthed–
   Were kept in check: enough
     For all, they ate their fill

And left. And then the hawk came,
   Took up residence, perching
     On the electric wires, and waited

For those moments when, unwary,
   Trusting my simple paradise,
     A fattened junco might forget

Its instinct for shadows in the sun.
   I thought of banging on windows,
     A saving alarm, though

I could never be quite sure
   Of that brief, startling moment
     When, sweeping down from the air,

The hawk would choose to change
   The balance at the feeder.
     In the end, I did nothing.

The birds learned to save themselves.
   In time they grew accustomed
     To what is and isn’t possible,

Accepting, it seemed, the random
   Attacks with poise and equanimity,
     Scattering into the thinning trees

And then regrouping, one by one,
   To eat their small measure
     Those afternoons of fading light.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.