All my birds stopped.

Stopped everything.

Spearing suet from between

the green grills.

Snatching sunflower seeds

from Droll Yankee feeders.

Flitting from tree trunk to branch.

Singing.

Stopped.

Everything.

Nor could my bravest Chickadees,

whispering chirps and secrets

from deeper in the woods,

dare to do their

darting flights.

In the silence,

sitting on my birding chair,

there,

hidden on the wood-lot edge,

I wondered,

“Why?”

I should have known.

For then, a movement,

like a floater in the corner of my eye,

I caught the Hawk,

stealthy,

gliding in the sky

to some more advantageous perch

from which to launch –

death.

I hadn’t heard its screech.

Didn’t,

until what would have been

to late

if I had been a Cardinal or a Finch

or even sensed

the ever present

presence of a hunting

hawk.

For every cooing, quivering

Mourning Dove,

there soars a Red Tail

hungry for a beating heart.

And thus the frightened

silence of the birds.