Sparrowhawk

I ram down hard on the pedal driving the blue metallic mustang around the bend, careening headlong into a future without You. A year of joust and weave, submerge and abandon. Your words echo and swirl as I clench and rock my molars from side to side, thrashing, masticating, obliterating. The weight of living with you.

Inky tire marks slash zig zags across the asphalt as I race toward that westerly. The skies above swell and blacken as the storm slams in, fierce and raucous. I concentrate on the slippery serpentine road ahead. My boot vibrating like angry bees. Rage and fear occupy the same breath.

What lies ahead—starting over at this stage. Daunting. I juice up the radio, blaring it like infantry music. I’m singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot of Love” at the top of my lungs. Screaming it out. Purging.

Frenetic rain slashes and sloshes at the front windshield, creating a blurry muddle …like looking through wax paper. The squall whips up debris, slamming an airborne projectile into the passenger side window.

Through the crack saw-toothing the glass to my right, I glimpse the silhouette of a tiny bird tumbling in the marauding wind at stop-action, freeze-frame, speed. Blue-grey chevrons, slender rufous barring, plumy wings pinned against its sides, sopping. A sparrowhawk, I think. Its two atomic yellow-alloy eyes, searching. Long, powerful talons, grappling for purchase. The punishing gale winds batting its body like a bauble.

Overhead, clouds shape-shift as rolling explosions boom like a timpani drum. I pump the brakes to slow down. The hawk summersaulting over and again, head pressed down to its breastplate, bracing itself against the squall, determined, spirited, resolute—not giving in to the onslaught. Its mustard-yellow beak clenched slightly open, gasping for air. How did it get separated from its flock? Was it hunting passerines and caught off guard, swept up in this diabolical tempest? 

Without warning, a rush of trees vaults out of the storm. Giant cedar, Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, gargantuan sentinels of the forest, part wide like the red sea. Branches snap, creatures bolt, as I slam on the brakes, trying to undo my foolery, my haste. The mustang hurtles nose first into the black maw. I yank my boot off the steel pedal, bracing for what is to come. The atmosphere redistributes in slo-mo as the chassis loosens its assembly. Everything is muted in a soft mercurial haze as I enter—the space in the in-between—like I’m drowning, like I want to drown, like I’ve already drowned.

Petrichor infiltrates the mangled hulk of steel and Naugahyde. I forget myself, You, my wounds: the electric shock in my neck and back, the tingling on the left side of my body; the engine smoke coiling skyward. All I sense is the sparrowhawk. It is my phoenix in brilliant scarlet and gold plumage. I issue a melodious cry. A battle cry. I want to live. I can’t, won’t give up while this tiny bird is fierce, indomitable. I would die of shame.

The wind infuriates. The sparrowhawk is jettisoned high onto a thermal out of harm’s way, and out of my line of sight. But it has saved me, shown me the way. I brood about this tiny creature, how it perseveres against the odds, envy the courage, grit, and stamina of this avian marvel—do birds too feel the weight of living? Blanketed in nitro-cold silence, I slip in and out of consciousness; do not hear the sirens nearing.