I see no fluid, flock-in- motion patterns today.
They fly frenzied, frantic; the air boils as wild wings carry them in a dozen disorderly directions.
They churn across my window view.
I can name this flight plan. I’ve seen it before.
Flock unity deteriorates, disintegrates,
and it’s each bird
for itself.
Hawk Fear.
But today my thoughts refuse to settle, to flow, to coalesce.
My mind flock flutters in disarray. I try to pray.
I listen.
I list my daily, weekly chores and plans,
but frenetic flight continues as I stare out at the gathering light.
He glides,
steady as an archer’s arrow;
his shadow drifts across the garden.
I knew it.
He is close, too close, and I hope “my” cardinal is out of range, out of view.
(Earlier, I’d heard the redbird’s insistent “fuss, fuss, chirp,” bird-speak for “Hawk Fear.”)
I think a starling would be a better breakfast,
or a common English sparrow.
Even a pigeon.
Just not one of “my birds.”
No need to “wonder” far.
I know its name, its family,
genus,
species,
and O God, yes,
I know its Kingdom.
The family of fear is far too familiar to my soul.
Dread.
Distress.
Panic.
Apprehension.
Anxiety.
They form a flock of shadowy figures from the Dark side,
the Kingdom into which I as born,
from which I’ve been set free,
to which I own no further allegiance.
Yet the hawk hunts, haunts my days and floats noiselessly through my nights.
When my perspectacles are hazed with fear, I lose sight of refuge and shelter.
Anxiety flutters through my heart and worry wings its way across my day.
I forget who I am,
Whose I am.
catch my breath,
and hear the Whisper:
“You won’t have this one, not one of Mine.”
Even – especially- on stormy days,
on days when heaviest fog obscures the view,
and a hawk waits, it seems, on every branch,
I am carried.
I am sheltered.
I am hidden.
I am held.
Psalm 56:3,4
When I am afraid,
I put my trust in You.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust;
I shall not be afraid.