Hawk Roosting
by Ted Hughes
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
Maverick Mist 
Wonderful! The sun is peaking through the clouds here 🙂
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Thanks. Crazy good weather here, 64F/18C today and the robins are back like it’s Spring. 🙂
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Thank you for liking “City Geometry” and “Snowstorm.” What a majestic bird and poem! I have not seen a hawk around here lately, but I did see a woodpecker in my yard this week. 🙂
It is foggy here in the mornings, but the weather is nice here in Sacramento once the fog burns off. The daytime highs are also in the 60F range, and the daytime highs are supposed to be in the 70F range this weekend!
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Thank you. Funny you mention it, I saw a woodpecker when shooting the hawk yesterday. Got a couple of photos of the woodpecker but it was kind of jumpy. We’re supposed to cool down during the week but will still be in the 40’s which isn’t bad for January. Keep sending the warm weather this way. 🙂
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You saw a woodpecker too! What a funny coincidence! 🙂 Another photographer told me it is challenging to photograph birds and wild animals because they do not always cooperate. Some of them are scared of people, of course.
The night temperatures here are in the 40s. Spring is only about two months away, so warm weather will probably return to you soon. 🙂
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It’s easier for me to spot birds in the winter when there’s no leaves on the trees.
Think Spring! 🙂
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Yes, that makes sense. In my case, I also heard the woodpecker as well as saw it in some bare tree branches. The neighborhood was so quiet at the time that I could literally hear it pecking at a branch. It was quite noisy! 🙂
Yes, thinking about spring is the way to go! 🙂
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