what was

Blue sky ice out on the canal this first warm winter day
Quieting thoughts of rising seas
I tuck under the blanket of today’s warmth
Despair can wait
Heard it pairs well with snow due in days ahead

I'm tickling downstream in silence
but these waters haven’t buoyed a person in some time
so the canoe parts the surface like a predator.
My stealth is wildly misinterpreted.

Mergansers scamper away - the percussion section
mallards, like jackrabbits, only spring into action
at the very last second
exploding upward
their quacks fading with distance
An avian tape delay
Lumbering grey black grass filled
geese round out the horn section
their call and response caroms downstream and they follow,
one then all.

I’m left sliding into a clapotic waterscape
scarred by their departures
while the departed swirl overhead
frantically deciding whether to congregate ahead
or behind me.

Wind is tossing clouds around today
from the quieting water’s level
you’d be forgiven for wondering
why every bird aloft seems like they’re just learning to fly.

It’s calm below,
oddly so
She overtakes me as though
I’ve wandered downrange
while targets are still live
A young hawk
Her appearance is kin to catching sight of a meteor
By the time you realize what is,
you find yourself in what was.
Hawks fly in future tense

To have seen the story this raptor winged over the water,
to know her points of rest,
to glimpse a wind fueled seeking spiral above a bridge
followed by a fall
that seemed like a renunciation of flight
only to reveal itself as mastery.

There must have been a moment when
the Hawk saw me downrange and didn’t mind
For all those departures that left
me lamenting my inelegance,
in the shadow of my attention was an unseen moment of approach
The Hawk chose proximity.

The rhythm of merganser feet was a lesson
Had I been a Song Sparrow
she would have embraced me
winged us into a confused sky
as mallards settled below
streaks of white noise hushing into shore
Past and future
stitched together with a hallux