The Hawk Deck 11:34am
The Chick-a-dee calls Me
away from My Self
to The Time of My Mother
when My Mother fed Them
& Me
in Valley Cottage
& called to Them
“Chick-a-dee-dee
Chick-a-dee-dee”
Here on The Hawk
Those Little Birds
take Me back
to when I was A Little Girl
raised by a single mother
in My First Real Home
My Real Home Now
is here on The Hawk
Fifty Years Later
where I listen
to The Chick-a-dees
of My Choosing
The Hawk Deck 11:15am
The Birds of My Childhood —
I have Them All Here:
The Back Woods Jay Squawk
of Valley Cottage
The Low Brush Cheep
of The Chick-a-dee-dee-dee
The Harsh Cawing of The Morning Crow
on McNutt’s Island
The Hearkening Bleat
of The Summer Willet
from My Old Jordan Bay
–
These places I will never see again
but They Call to Me Still
The Hawk Deck 10:12am
How can One Sound
conjure up A Place
and A Time?
— It’s The Call Of The Jay
that does It for Me
That Authoritative Squawk
harkens back to My Childhood
growing up in The Woods
of Rockland County
where I was a bossy child neighbour
and control freak
to My Brother
The Hawk Living Room 8:30pm
After supper in Valley Cottage
My Brother & I turned on
the overhead light
Our Mother never used
& turned & twirled
until We were dizzy
We lay down on the thin carpet
happily feeling Our Living Room
spin
The Tomato-coloured Couch 7:35pm
I caught an internal breath
after hanging The Preserved Newspaper Clipping
from The New York Times Book Review
dated June 4,1978 —
“Be A Literary Critic! Earn Big Bucks!”
hung first by Scotch Tape
in My Mother’s Valley Cottage Study
now hung, framed, in My Hawk Kitchen —
Did My Heart Really Skip
as I thought of My Literary Mother
Who, when I was eleven,
redacted Nova Scotia’s License Plate Slogan
“Canada’s Ocean Play Ground”
with black electricians tape?
The Hawk Portico NOON
When I hear The Squawk of The Jay
It stirs something in Me
some nebulous touch of nostalgia
I cannot put My Finger on
It has something to do with My Childhood
or My Growing Up
solitary in Valley Cottage
maybe in The Backyard Woods —
I had few friends:
one kooky one
Who always chanted “Hyde Hyde —
Take Me Outside”
when I was happy to oblige
after some pretend reluctance
Joanna Gilman Hyde 