I saw this morning . . .
I saw this morning a hawk, minutes after it had taken a mourning dove on the lawn of city hall as I walked to Easter Sunday mass. The tableau not exactly nature morte.
The gutted dove was some gray feathers in a circle and a flash of rose-red meat on the bright young grass.
On seeing me, the little predator lifted away, prey clutched in its talons, to the top of a nearly leafless sycamore. It was springtime, but not yet in full. From a bare limb, the Buteo jamaicensis looked down. I hurried a little under the bird's gaze.
Mass was about to begin. I had another ten minutes to walk.
Fr. Hopkins, what would you have made it? What soars with a bird when it's the earth-bound killer?
Later, at mass that morning, the congregation recited the old Easter sequence with its question about about an empty tomb.
Dic nobis Maria, Quid vidisti in via? "Tell us Mary, what did you see on your way?" Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando. "Death and life in strange combat."
The image on this page was taken by Flickr user Mark Couvillion. It was used under a Creative Commons license.