Virgin - Carol Arnold

A red tailed hawk landed on the telephone poll outside my window this afternoon, a virgin to this perch of only pigeons and crows. I sucked in my breath when I saw him, just as I did when I first laid eyes on a lion. The hawk surveyed his hunting ground of asphalt and steel, just as the lion had surveyed his of forest and plain, and the gaze was the same too, older and more patient than ten thousand years. Neither creature left any doubt of their wildness, and for a moment I felt my wildness too, but when the hawk spread its wings and swooped over the house, the blue jay that replaced him reminded me once again of my place in the world. He pecked worriedly at the wood at the top of the pole, then turned his head toward me as if to say, “This will not do. This will not do at all.”