Poetry Dec 10, 2025

Animal Instinct

By Staff

Today a Cooper’s Hawk perched itself

outside our bedroom window on a low branch

of a small tree not twenty feet away.

The courtyard of our condo complex.

Frequented by all sorts of wildlife:

sparrows and wrens, mourning doves, juncos,

hummingbirds, now and then a cardinal,

chipmunks, rabbits, lots of squirrels.

But birds this big, hunters, only rarely.

In thirteen years, in fact, only twice before.

We’ll see them floating on the currents

high above, but never down where we are,

certainly never still, or perched where we

can watch them even for a moment.

This one stayed for several hours.

We could see its tail feathers sticking down

behind the branch the bird was perched on,

talons wrapped around the branch, the sharp

hooked beak designed for tearing flesh.

It sat so still, it almost seemed a statue

or a decoy, but the head kept turning,

turning, turning, and the eyes kept looking

for something, movement perhaps, something

to kill. After all, all living things must eat.

But the little critters in the courtyard

that my wife’s been feeding nearly every day

were, this morning, nowhere to be seen.