Hurt Hawks Man and the Natural World Quotes

The hawk with his busted wing may look like easy game, but the cat and coyote are wise to his sharp defenses. They might have shortened the hawk's wait, otherwise. A dispassionate line like this puts each animal in perspective. You're either a meal or a diner in this great food chain of life.

You'd have to be a cur, a lowdown mongrel, to kick a bird when he's down, but that's just what they do. Still, they know better than to get too close. With his injury the hawk has almost come down to their level. Almost, but not quite.

What an insult. You wouldn't think "communal" could be said with so much dripping scorn. It's like the speaker is calling them sheep or lemmings. By losing their individuality, they lose touch with the wild God. Only when they're dying do they regain a memory of that wildness. This is maybe what this whole section of the poem is leading up to, this statement that divine communion usually is only available to people in the moment when they are dying. Unless of course you're a wild individualist like the speaker, himself.

You heard it. He cares more for the wild predator than his own species. Good thing there are laws (penalties) or some heads might have rolled. This is a pretty radical statement. Most people put humans at the top of the pyramid, but not this speaker. This makes what he has to do all the more awesome (in the old sense of the word).

A gift? Is the hawk thinking, "oh you shouldn't have?" This killing is made to sound both direct (look at all those single syllables) and, well, poetic. "Lead gift" is a euphemism for the shot that kills this bird. And doesn't everything seem nicer if it happens at twilight? After the build-up, after knowing that the speaker would sooner kill a man than do this act, he now makes it a gift. The hawk had been asking for it (not begging, though!). What else had given? Freedom, the speaker says. This is the final liberation.