Poem of the Week: Red Tailed Hawks by W. D. Ehrhart

Today's poem is a lovely one for the first week of school here in Sydney, Australia. I'd like to dedicate it to all my school-teacher friends out there!

W. D. Ehrhart is a high school teacher himself, and also a highly acclaimed poet (mostly known for his Vietnam War poems). This poem concerns the events of a school excursion to Mill Grove, Audubon, Pennsylvania. The kids are mucking up and have no appreciation of the wild beauty surrounding them, until one of them spots a red tailed hawk in the sky.

I see myself in the kids, going through life without realising the beauty that surrounds me, until all of a sudden someone says, '"There's a Hawk", and points', and the world grows silent and reverent for a moment as I take in the beauty that has always been there, just beyond my gaze.

Red Tailed Hawks
W. D. Ehrhart

These chattering children fill the woods
with so much raw exuberance one wonders
what's the point of coming here
when any local playground would suffice.

Their teacher twice tells Michael and James,
"Don't throw acorns, please," to no effect:
they start again the moment she turns
to remind Adrienne, "Stay on the path."

Leela's worried she'll fall in the creek.
Chelsea and Ben are pushing each other
when someone, one of the children, shouts,
"There's a hawk!" and points.

"There's another!" "There!" "Another!"
other children cry: four red-tailed hawks
lazily circling, gliding, whirling, wheeling,
riding an unseen thermal up so high

the children tip their heads straight back
and still the hawks rise higher, higher still,
until they're only four black dots
of elemental joy against white clouds,

the children, even Michael and James,
so intent, so silent one can almost hear
wings they want to lift them
where the hawks have gone.

(c) 2001, W. D. Ehrhart. Greatest Hits 1970-2000. Pudding House Publications.