The Republicans started their convention in Cleveland, Ohio today. The TV is on with the sound muted, and I’ve raised the blinds to look out the window at the two hawks in my back yard. I’m lying in bed as I watch the hawks, who have no idea they are being watched and not the Republicans. There is an old book in my lap, early Hemingway. It is a book I know, but I don’t mind. Since last week I’ve been reading it again, slowly. I read it until I come across a familiar sentence—like wandering lost in Rome until you pass a familiar landmark, the Pantheon or Colosseum—or one I can admire,
The cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room.
The hawks have been here for weeks. They have taken up residence in the big cherry tree that turns pink each spring here in the lower Hudson Valley. We first noticed them when all the songbirds in the neighborhood disappeared, followed by the majestic red cardinal we used to enjoy watching, and finally the quarrelsome blue jays, bullies themselves, who knew they had met their match. There was a family of sparrows that had taken up residence under the gray metal flap of our kitchen vent, meticulously building a nest for three successive families of babies. Gone, too. I cleaned out the remains of their nest last week, using a pair of tongs we keep hanging on the side of the stainless steel gas grill.
Hawks are large, though considerably smaller than their raptor cousin, the American bald eagle. Our hawks are red-tailed, buteo jamaicensis, commonly called chicken hawks; they rarely prey on standard sized chickens (though I have noticed the black squirrels have gone into hiding as well as the chipmunks). Our little cocker spaniel does not seem to be afraid of the hawks, who in any case ignore her. She licks her paws and lies panting against the house under the shade of a shrub barely large enough to cover her, in the ditch that she dug last summer.
The heads of the hawks are large, with hooded, squinting eyes, and their talons are sharp as razors. They are aggressive, and strong fliers, but their vocalization is short and dull and very monotonous, delivered in a high pitched wail, with a downward slur:
Kree-eee-ar! Kree-eee-ar! Kree-eee-ar!
It is 4:26 pm. On TV protesters in the convention hall chant in support of a roll call after RNC officials denied same. I listen for a while, then hit mute again.
Kree-eee-ar! Kree-eee-ar! Kree-eee-ar!
Sometimes when I’m reading I can feel a calming breeze blow through me. Summer reading is a simple pleasure.
~
Gary Percesepe is an editor at New World Writing.