Two Hawks.

Red-tailed, by my Peterson's Guide, and on the biggish end of the scale. The crows started going crazy on the dogwalk and then there they were, hawks, sailing along, big, big, big. The sky's been kind of white all day long, high haze and a few clouds and the hint of maybe a little weather overnight. Not that we're not having weather now. But something else, something other. It's raining in Tennessee and Alabama and Mississippi. They're saying a little bit of that might get here.

Things are piling up in the house: mail, coffee mugs, socks. Something gets put down and then I stare at it, leave it where it lies. There is a kind of tyranny of items around here. Pizza coupons. Plugs and wires. Now the Peterson's Guide, which may be here on the desk a week from now if I don't get up immediately to put it away.

There are 236 species of hawks (kites, eagles, buteos, accipiters, harriers) in the world. 19 of these are in the American East.

In second grade I did a project on birds of prey. It was meant to be a joint project with my friend Jack Lancaster, who at the last minute had his dad do the whole thing and turned his in seperately from mine, leaving me with just 20-some-odd colored-pencil birds of prey drawings, and just the heads, at that. He had, as I recall, a model of a fucking bird of prey and like three binders of bird of prey information. He got an A. I got a C.

Later that year, Jack got his leg caught in his bicycle wheel riding down his driveway, got a spiral fracture, and was in a body cast for six months. They brought him to show-and-tell. We signed his chest. He always limped after that, never really could ever run right again.

That's what happens.