Duck Hawk                                            B. Rose Huber

 

 

My predecessor leaves little behind of importance: a stack of business cards rubber-banded together. Nails sporadically placed, some with holes surrounding the stud. An inedible piece of rot beneath a metal bookcase. Before I got here, the office was covered in clippings: articles touting soon-to-be elected officials, comic strips drawn by no-name artists, and photographs of newly hatched peregrine falcons.  Apparently, birds are a big deal around here.

 

I spend the initial months filling his former spaces with insignificant objects of my own. After the clean-sweep, only one thing remains on the corkboard – a photograph, adorned with a personal note: There are peregrine falcons on the Cathedral roof. They are cool, you will love them. I pause, looking at that black-headed bird and its blue-grey back, all white under parts. It’s the positioning of its head, cocked smugly to the side that forces me to leave it hanging.

 

At first, there is nothing more to this bird than quirky characteristics. The bird reaches sexual maturity within one year and then mates for life. I see this union is highlighted atop the Cathedral of Learning, where E2 and Dorothy nest away – like other peregrines – atop a tall building, cliff edge, or scrape. This duck hawk cannot tolerate polar cold or tropic hot, which – I think – makes him a sensible creature.

 

As time elapses between October and May, I begin to feel the weight of this bird, perched upon my shoulder. Suddenly, he is there in the early hours of coffee and oatmeal, hunting medium-sized birds for a treat. I find him as I type upon the same keyboard, his duck hawk feathers moving at resounding speeds. Some days, I can feel him in every word I place upon the screen. Other days, we are both wandering, migrating to unreachable spaces.

 

In May, close to the time in which the peregrines hatch, I receive an unexpected visitor. My predecessor: donned in a black shirt, tan pants, eyes covered in sunglasses, leaning himself backward in the chair. “Like what I left behind?” he says.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

B. Rose Huber is a science writer for the University of Pittsburgh. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore, where she published her novella "A Bear's Place." This piece is an excerpt from the science-into-story chapbook she's writing in which she translates scientific press releases into prose-style poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pear Noir!, Cobalt, Weave Magazine, and The Light Ekphrastic.