Natural Order John Field

When I was fifteen my faith unraveled to its core

for some reason I no longer remember.

That was the year I stopped begging

the earth's absentee landlord for an afterlife

and began paying close attention

to the natural order of things,

such as the graceful sight of pheasants in flight

before I blasted them out of the sky.

In July our valley turned into a landscape

of sudden vanishings when a flood

stampeded livestock and uprooted trees

down the Upper Iowa River.

On Main Street I watched men wearing hip boots

and dead smiles loot grocery stores

and then disappear in motor boats.

In our backyard the prehistoric stink 

of rotting debris

outranked the fragrance of honeysuckle.

Deep in a daze that afternoon

and far beyond what I knew

I hiked the high-strung bluffs that circle our town

until I reached the sacred peak of Pulpit Rock

and then looked down into the angry heart

of a violent river. No answers there. Nothing. Never.

Just swamps where meadows used to be

and the kind of truth that's reserved for its victims.

So I looked up and watched a hawk

pause at the tip of its arc

and hang suspended in the air

as if welded there. Seconds later it broke free

from heaven's gravity

and slurred earthward in a liberating blur.

Then swooped up again so close to me

that I could see the tip of a tail

hanging out of its beak.

During that indelible moment

everything changed from anarchy

into an ethical life not forever

but long enough for me to forgive myself

and the next day sell my shotgun to a friend.