Young Man With a Juvenile Red Tail Hawk In Schuyler Park.

Young Man With a Juvenile Red Tail Hawk In Schuyler Park.

By Catt Kingsgrave

Strap your bells upon my heels to take my silent flight away,

From the jesses let me dangle till I let you have your say.

Keep me hungry, keep me focused, keep me near so I must come

Whene’er you call me from the sky to stoop and nibble at your crumbs.

Tell yourself you trapped me fairly; there’s no sin for to atone

That I am happier being yours than when entirely my own.

Call me emblem of the Royal, or the favorite sport of kings

Specimen or prize or profit, proof of how your manhood swings

But fancy not I’ll come to love the hand inside the leather glove

Don’t dream that I’ll have given up myself -- the arching sky above

Wide thermals rising from the ground, to stoop like lightning without sound

Of bells; my prey what might be found and carried off. You keep the ground.

Then lace your eyeless hood atop my head

And know that I would like you better dead.

Author's note: Yes, I've handled captive raptors and owls before -- all those birds were rescues who could never be released wild again, not young, healthy birds trapped and taken from the wild. Yes, I know that the training means are far more humane now than they used to be... but then the means of breaking the spirit of a wife used to be just as openly brutal, and the fact that one breaks that spirit more gently now does not make it less broken, Nor less of a shame in my mind. I've no idea if the young man had the right permits and licenses to have captured the bird, or to be training her that way. Not having the authority to intervene if he didn't, it did not seem worthwhile to ask. But I do know that hearing him talk about her training echoed eerily the pattern of domination and control that often begins when a domestic partner turns violent.

The poem above came to me as I drove home from the park.
Make of it what you will.