I saw the shadow of his wings first as the feather tips kissed the glass. But maybe that's what prey see too, a darkening of the sun before the talons and the beak close in. And then the hawk landed on the lantern post and stared in the window at me.

Hawk was the herald of my path, some twenty years ago now. We had a conversation that day, the first conversation of it's kind I had since I was a child, since I was allowed to believe in things childish. I was twenty three and it was in the middle of a college campus on a snowy day. That hawk was grey, and I was brought to tears before it.

We have had more conversations in the years spanning, but only when he comes to me, which he does rarely.

Today we had another talk from across the glass, him nodding his head in the breeze, me cross-legged sipping coffee in front of shiny boxes and radiating screens. He was red-tailed, this one, and sleek, a juvenile.

The content of the conversation is unimportant. But what I've come to realize in the hours since, is that I'm missing something.

I need to take some solitary retreats in the spring and summer, just me and the wind and the earth and the animals and the water. Because I've been talking too much and thinking too much and talking about how to think and thinking about how to talk. And there rises this buzz of noise and distraction, the attempted capture of what is ineffable, and the wheeze and blindness of struggle. I'm missing something along the way, the thing that I suspect I always miss. And maybe it's time to stop missing it so often.

In the interim and around the margins, I need to start my real practice. And I need to balance out my time better so as to give myself those quiet connections, to have time for remembering how to breathe and time to simply roll on my back in the clover, all four paws waving. Because who knows what else I'm missing.

Thank you, Hawk. I do try, but maybe sometimes I don't try as hard as I could. We'll see what I can muster in the coming season.