Life From Death

​Life from death.

Meet Pacific Baza, a stunning crested hawk with piercing yellow eyes... this beauty was still leaving its body when I passed its fallen shape, picked at by a solitary raven who was pulling out the first clouds of feathers, blowing pale snow across the road to snag on tall grass like downy prayer flags.

Chased the raven off and sang and loved every inch of feathers and talon and tail and beak as this magnificent bird left its body, gazing at me with a pure golden eye until there was no light left in it.

I cried as I sang it aloft. Trucks thundered past, blind and careless, buffeting its perfect wings and whipping my hair into snakes. Ten minutes later I laughed in glee, hand out the window undulating fingertips to shoulder into the rushing wind as the car zoomed along; feeling the bird’s spirit in and around and through me, my wheels became feathers and the air was light beneath them and I flew, and the spirit bird flew with me for a time, before it wheeled away into the high blue bowl of sky and never returned. The joy stayed, though.

Then a huge journey with a soul brother making fire by friction and preparing the meat, red as velvet, punchy and rich and earthy. Time became gelid, feathers sticking to fingers, cooking and smoking each power packed morsel on pumice stones on a deserted beach, in the sheltering arms of a banksia grove. An onshore breeze danced the grasses around us into a frenzy, but thanks to the banksias left us unruffled, cocooned in the sacred and the taste of blood and smoke and life and death and some wondrous cloak of dark mystery.

I ate the heart raw and dreamed of wings under a glowing moon and tumbling skeins of stars, meteorites streaking cold fire across the vault of night. No sleeping mat, just a blanket and guttering flame for warmth until predawn dew crashed like a wave and I unearthed a mat and pulled a wet sleeping bag over myself, among discarded feathers stuck to the grass by drops of condensed water, and the endless hum-roar of waves.

The wings and tail are stretched and pinned ready to become fans, and I am still thrumming with the energy of wild meat, a gift from this magnificent raptor who touched the sky with outstretched wings and then came to earth to rest in my heart and my cells.
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Thank you Baza.

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