A Race to the Treeline

A Race to the Treeline.
Found in an old notebook of mine.

Flung aloft the death bird wheels
High above and looking, steady,
Turning, soaring, the sun she shields
From her prey, crouching, ready.

Shot along wings all flashing,
Splash of color races treeward,
The falcon stoops, talons reaching,
Feathers fly, to drift to leeward.


The story behind it. I wrote this in 1977. About ten or twelve years before I wrote this I had been hunting pheasant in Nebraska, as I walked through a field I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye, I turned and just saw the first strike, the next field over. An explosion of feathers (it seemed at the time, or in my memory), the falcon zoomed on past, then wheeled around and disappeared in the cornstalks, presumably on top her prey.