Life from death

A gift of life from a wondrous wild creature to me, and from me to you

Meet Pacific Baza, a stunning crested hawk with piercing yellow eyes.

This beauty was still leaving its body when I passed its fallen shape. A car must have struck it while it chased some small prey. Bird bones are cunning and delicate, made mostly of air, otherwise they could never fly. Baza didn’t stand a chance. It was already being picked at. A solitary raven pulled out the first clouds of feathers, which blew pale snow across the road to snag on tall grass like downy prayer flags.

I chased the raven off. Unimpressed and mournful, it circled a couple of times, creaking regret.

The Baza shivered under my thumb, heart a fading quiver of fragile thunder, chasing clouds I couldn’t see. I sang and loved every inch of feathers and talon, tail and beak as this magnificent bird left its body, gazing at me with a pure golden eye until there was no light left in it.

I sang through its last shudders, tears blurring the road into a river. Its heart gave a couple of mighty kicks, then stilled. Trucks thundered past, blind and careless, buffeting its perfect wings and whipping my hair into snakes.

My companion asked, ‘Should we bury it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s eat it. It’s perfect.’

Ten minutes later we wove and dove back into the river of jostling vehicles and I rang with glee, hand out the window, undulating fingertip to shoulder into the rushing wind as the car zoomed along. My wheels became feathers and the air was light beneath them. I flew. Spirit bird flew with me for a time, before it wheeled away into the high bowl of blue and never returned. The joy stayed, though.

Where to prepare this small body for a ritual of honouring? Somewhere the roar of traffic and cacophony of humans could be swallowed by an endless sussurrus of sea. A small gap in the scrub beckoned, and maybe the spirit of the bird was still with us, because I didn’t even think, turned down it and onto the sand in a reckless churn of wheels and laughter. We raced the tide to a small bay and climbed a dune to a grove of banksias that snared the wind and hushed it to silence.

Of course we had to do this thing right, we had come this far. How we do one thing is how we do everything, and to honour a life requires ritual and ceremony. I don’t know when we fell into silence. Words stopped being important. We took our time, making fire by friction and preparing the meat, red as velvet, punchy and rich and earthy. The bird’s belly was full of stick insects and fruit. This was a marvel; I hadn’t realised a raptor would eat fruit. Thank you, bird, for teaching me a new thing.

Time became gelid, feathers sticking to fingers, cooking and smoking each power packed morsel on pumice stones on a deserted beach, in the sheltering arms of twisted trees. An onshore breeze danced the grasses around us into a frenzy, but thanks to the banksias, left us unruffled, cocooned in the sacred and the taste of blood and smoke and life and death and some wondrous cloak of dark mystery.

I ate the heart raw and dreamed of wings under a glowing moon and tumbling skeins of stars, meteorites streaking cold fire across the vault of night. No sleeping mat, just a blanket and guttering flame for warmth until predawn dew crashed like a wave and I pulled the blanket over my face, among discarded feathers stuck to the grass by drops of condensed water, and the endless hum-roar of waves.

And oh, what energy galloped through my veins as my new-grown eyes scanned the sun for prey, a gift from this magnificent raptor who touched the sky with outstretched wings and then came to earth to rest in my heart and my cells.
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Thank you Baza.