I’ve taken up my walks again
Along the lonely, winding canyon road
Where the occasional car whizzes by the embankments
Protecting the creek down below and beyond
The descending hillside, the water that reminds
Non-stop all day and all night,
Same but always different.
Last night a lone hawk screeched from the mouth
Of a smaller canyon further up the mountain.
It wandered about, yelling into the dark night.
I couldn’t see it, but once, as it swooped
Down around me quickly,
Startling me with glee, then disappearing.
As I rounded a distant bend, I heard it again,
Almost wailing from the darkness of the creek bottom,
Its shrills following an invisible, meandering course
Through the black distance.
Today friends evacuated wildfires in Oregon,
Last week it was blazes near Santa Cruz.
Our air in Ojai is smoky, haze from who knows where,
The whole west coast ablaze
And Denver is freezing I hear,
While our president mocks us for our masks
And whines about his weenie.
I don’t know how to describe it,
But as a moment of poetry
And justice, this lone voice
Screaming to the night out of nowhere
For everything.
Raptor in rapture, beauty invisible,
Avoiding the road, and all it means,
Smart creature you are.
