On Hawks and Crows
A hawk is pestered by two crows in Ingleside, San Francisco. Photo by Katie Tomzynski
I suppose I first started paying attention to the crows in January 2019.
We were having so much rain in San Francisco, it rained for days and days and it was so cold. I was living in a tiny studio apartment with no windows and when it rained I would leave the backdoor open so I could listen to the raindrops. I was surprised by how often I heard the crows, cawing or clucking.
Since it was so cold that month, I often wore a big scarf and my camel-colored coat, a hand-me-down from my friend Sophia. I brought that coat along with me to Norwich and Paris, so whenever it’s cold enough to wear it I feel transported to a different place, a colder and older place.
Here I am wearing the camel-colored coat in Gay Paree in February 2017. Photo by Clayton Curtice
But anyway, the birds.
So in January 2019, inspired by the rainy weather, my trusty coat, and the sounds of the birds I wrote my Crow Poem (Croem). You can read it here! The poem didn’t come out this way originally, I did a lot of different drafts. I added a few stanzas and cut some back, then decided I wanted my poem to have 13 parts, a reference to Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Blackbird (as a creative writing student this poem is really hammered into your brain, so it’s almost a little joke to reference it). I started by writing about the crows…but then I found myself writing about the hawks I’d seen around, and how special it feels to see them.
A hawk flees from its perch on the telephone pole after feeling watched. Photo by Katie Tomzynski
So in January 2019 I started scratching out this poem, it was probably a rainy Monday morning. The next week the sun was out in San Francisco again. After all that rain and rain. So I open the backdoor to let some sun in, I step out onto the back step and I look up into the neighbors’ pine tree that hung over the fence into our little yard. Peering down at me from one of the lower branches, so close is a HAWK!!! Watching me!
I stood there, wordless, watching the hawk till he felt too watched and flew off. I felt struck by lightning! I felt like I had conjured the hawk myself! With my dang poetry! It was a gift from the heavens saying, “Go on, keep writing.”
