I'm glad, Sharon, you didn't mind my comments, and maybe it was a Sharp-
shinned Hawk since their eyes are closest to red, or a Cooper's (though they're
less numerous) and since you thought it might be a falcon, that could argue for
either, since the Cooper's is Peregrine Falcon size and sometimes taken for a
falcon.
And yes, I don't know why they call them 'purple' finches either, when they're
red, burgundy, or raspberry colored.
And as you put it more clearly, yes, the ending does seem too pat, as if the
ending were known before the poem was written.
When I was a kid, I was sent one day on an errand to the market and got there
just after a robbery had taken place. A policeman was questioning a clerk and
she described the robber as having had 'beady eyes'. The cop persisted, 'was he
tall? short? dark hair? blond?'' etc, and she just kept saying 'all I know is he had
beady eyes.' I remember wondering if the robber really did have beady eyes, or
if she had just given to him the gaze she expected he would have, since memory
often confirms one's preconceptions rather than persists with actual, recalcitrant
facts. Had she expected any robber except one with 'beady eyes'? lol,
Well, sorry for rambling, but in your poem, the red-eyed hawk and the red bird
it kills as the end are like a frame for these questioning uncertainties, but
'framed', so, the questions seem more rhetorical than I'd guess they mean to be,
or the event of the hawk hunting seems too illustrative of an already drawn but
undisclosed conclusion.
Ergh, I hope that makes sense.
best,
Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 21:09:59 -0700
>From: SB <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Snapshot 08 February 02006
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Rebecca, thanks so much for this. Actually, I wonder what kind of hawk
>has red eyes, too, and looked through Sibley to find it -- but didn't.
>But its eyes were most certainly, and very, red.
>
>We have 'puple finches', which in fact have red heads, a sort of
>burgundy red, but not at all purple.
>
>So I am actually recording just what happened -- though this may be a
>falcon rather than a hawk -- and I didn't actually see which bird it
>got, but today there were chicadees, nuthatches, sparrows, and finches
>to choose from.
>
>But -- I was concerned that the ending here was too 'pat' -- and I
>think that is what you, too, are seeing?
>
>On 2/8/06, Rebecca Seiferle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Sharon, I like this, maybe because a hawk has been keeping me company all
>> winter, flying to the top of the great pine every morning as I go out on the
deck.
>>
>> But I wondered what sort of hawk is "red-eyed" just as I wondered what sort
of
>> finch in February in Montana, and then realized that in a way I feel the poem
as
>> if were steered, from that 'red-eyed', it seemed certain that the hawk would
>> have a dead red bird in its claws at the end. It seems to undercut the
speaker's
>> stance of uncertainty, considering, questioning, unsure about "God" which
>> becomes variously "Force" than "Faith on a monitor," like asking a question
that
>> one always has an answer for.
>>
>> Well, I hope that makes sense, and just disregard if it's of no use. It's not so
>> easy really for a hawk to catch another bird out of the air, I watched this
hawk
>> here try one morning for an hour without success which is probably why
they
>> usually go for rodents.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Rebecca
>>
>
>
>--
>~ SB =^..^=
>
>http://www.sbpoet.com
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