A Hawk

    The sunset. A clear, clear blue sky, where the air was a soft clear gold that could could never inspire evil. No vibrant colors, no explosion of glory, only the still beauty that gives peace.
    I was sitting on the stump of a tree, cut to a few inches off the ground, grey and dead. I perched on the very edge, so I would not sit in the dried green splat of bird poop in the middle of the wood.  It seemed a fitting place for me to sit. The beauty couldn't touch my messed-up soul tonight.
   Just last night, I had spoken and listened for an hour and forty-two minutes (to be precise). Just last night, I had heard my mouth admit that I could have certainty for eternity, but I could not summon the strength to dare to hope for tomorrow. I didn't dare to believe that things might get better. I did not have the strength.
   I despised myself for that weakness. I sat with my arms around my fire-clad knees, the skirt falling gently. With a pure white top, and a skirt all the colors of flame, my hair falling softly over my shoulders, I might look liked I belonged with a golden sunset. I'd hoped so, picking mulberries off a tree, for I would enjoy being beautiful as much as I enjoyed the flavor of the dark purple fruit spreading over my tongue. But I had turned and left, and found the grey tomb of a fallen dryad. I sat, and waited, asking God for help. For hope. For truth. For some other way of living, than being a blind person led by a blind faith.
   I acknowledged that I felt like I was living a dim, grey, harsh life, with no joy or hope. I was continuously fighting, fighting to do my duty, to love, to obey, to discipline myself. To do all that needed to be done. Even to hope, when things were dark. But hope I'd cut out, joy had left, and I was left with bleak days and endless, weary battles. I was fighting only on the strength of a memory. I had nothing, just the dim, lonely, shades of what I remembered. Nothing to fight for but that.
   Twas then I saw the hawk. I have loved all flying things, and birds, especially, have swooped over my head often when I needed to be comforted, or snapped out of self-absorption. The sun, still shining, outlined the white feathers of the out-stretched wings, a stroke of brown running through the middle, the white body white against gold air. It was soft and powerful and free. I sat, watching it; it circled overhead. One circle, two; I could not believe it had not left my sight by now. It flew over, and I tilted my head to keep it in sight. It landed on the top of the tall, tall, pale blue water-tower two houses down from my home.
    I followed. The back of my mind knew I was mad, knew that for a land-bound human to follow a winged creature of the sky was hopeless, but I did not have anything to lose but my place--the seat on a low, grey stump. The hawk waited for me, atop the tower, flitting its wings to keep its balance as soon as I thought it wasn't coming back. I came closer and looked up. It took off, past a line of trees; I followed again.
   It vanished. It was not in the trees, it was not in the clear blue sky, there was nothing of it left in the warm, still air. It was nothing but a memory now.
    I literally sank to my knees. Home was behind me, a few houses down. I wondered what this meant, if it meant anything at all; if a memory was to be enough warmth and strength to keep me fighting, to bring me victory as I leaned on the strength of God.
    I still don't know. But it is a beautiful memory. And it is a question, and reminder: if God wants to use a lord of the sky to lead a clumsy stumbler, he could do so. Was I willing to follow? And to keep going, even to turn and go home, when beauty was nothing but a memory?
    I do not have another choice, right now, for I have nowhere to be but home. But...I wanted to remember the hawk. So I came home, and wrote this. Hoping, maybe, that it will remind me that there is still beauty. That memories have power. And that obedience may not always make sense of the circumstances, but it is a good God whom I obey.
    A God who makes hawks. And who made me. Maybe someday I'll understand why.