Stoop:
To descend from a superior rank, dignity, or status.
To fly or dive down swiftly, usually to attack prey.
Yesterday morning found me on the patio, reading the Beaumont Enterprise, accounts of catastrophic deluge and small steps toward recovery. The various articles were like the facets of a prism. I turned the spectrum of emotions this way and that.
Then there intruded the scream of a red-shouldered hawk. Really?? I’m not so easily taken in as all that. I was pretty sure it was a blue jay, practicing his mimicry, trying to scare the other songbirds away so he could visit the birdfeeder in peace.
But then I heard two screams – one close, one answering from a distance. Unless a blue jay can split his voice and throw it high in the sky, these really were hawks.
So off with my readers and on with my regular glasses, just in time to see the closer hawk soaring, just in time to see him fold his wings, and “like a thunderbolt he fell.”
Either he fell upon a tasty treat, or hurt himself, for he began to scream from the ground, other side of a fence and a house from me. I hope he was screaming to his mate: “Lunch is served.”
I went on with my day, which as days will, filled with many things.
This morning came a chorus of reminders. Two wrens caroling. One cardinal chirping. One chickadee buzzing. One redbellied woodpecker chirring. Facets of a prism, pouring out color, converging to say, “Remember what you saw?”
I had almost forgotten. But, now that you mention it!
Here’s something I drew a long time ago:
Everlasting Arms 