If I were a hawk, my feelings about the day's length might be different. This evening, I saw a trio of them gliding and circling above the pine trees beyond which the sun must have then been setting. The sun had been out to display itself for a while, but the scattered clouds had gathered together and thickened once again, preventing yet another sunset. The hawks didn't seem to mind. They soared and swooped and glided, scribing circles and helices and figure eights against the scudding marbled sky, heedless of both the fading light and of the soft rain which had begun to fall. Hawks, I think, don't much concern themselves with the speed of earth's rotation. This makes it all the more strange that, as I watched them, I thought that I felt its turning slow, and even pause for a moment.
Meanwhile, a small bird of some sort had perched on the power cable strung across my front yard. It bobbed and turned, back and forth, appearing to look first up at the soaring hawks and then down at me, and opened its small beak to emit a remarkably piercing chirp, again and again. The hawks wheeled and sped west at at last, toward the invisible sunset. The small bird remained on the wire, chirping, until I turned and went back into the house. As I closed the door, the bird flew into the gathering darkness, letting a silence fall with the soft and soundless rain. I wonder if that bird was talking to me?