April 19: Hawk Watch

As I drove to the hawk watch on Bradbury Mountain this morning, a thick fog shrouded the coast. The radio was full of news and speculation about the Boston Marathon bombers. One had been killed in a shoot-out last night, the other on the loose. The thought of the entire city of Boston on lockdown gave me chills. 

We turned off the news, climbed up to the summit as the fog began to burn off. Birds sang in the trees--Palm and Pine Warblers, my first Brown Creeper of the spring, trilling junco. And soon, the hawks began to come. All day long they flew past. It was a thing of beauty.

Fog lifts, birds sing.

All day hawks stream northward,

a welcome distraction.

April 15: Horror

Following the news of the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, reading stories of indescribable horror. Why does it always shock us to learn, over and over again, that such evil exists in the world?

I've been frantically looking around for things to offer comfort--the season's first local Osprey, birdsong outside my office, learning that a poet whose work first inspired me to write poetry as a teenager (Sharon Olds) has won the Pulitzer Prize, praise from a Board member for work well done. But these are small things compared to people's lives.

Soaring Osprey, returned,
and singing sparrows--
sometimes this isn't enough.