Winner & Loser

Winner & Loser


Cycling along a pathway in a stony, dry bush
landscape I saw a hawk lose its kill, a sparrow,
the unfortunate fell in front of me, alive but
badly wounded. While the hawk sat on a tree,
an almond tree that had no business growing
here and it showed no one had tended to this
domestic plant years.

This bit of violence was none of my concern
I shouldn’t have picked it up the sparrow, but
now that I felt its nervous little heart beating
in my palm and its blood dripping on my hand,
it was hard to let go. I put nature’s victim on
a big boulder, sat still on my bike till the hawk
swooped and reclaimed its quarry