I was standing on a friend’s back porch with my hand on the screen door, getting ready to open it and let two dogs outside to frolic in the backyard when suddenly the birds stopped singing and the trees held still.
There came the powerful thump of wings.
A red-tailed hawk flew right in front me, inches from the screen door.
He landed on the fencepost, folded his wings and glared.
Oh, I was glad to see him—his wildness, his disdain, his mighty indifference.
“No one is going outside just yet,” I said to the dogs.
We stared at the hawk. The hawk stared back at us. And then he lifted his wings and disappeared.
All the backyard birds started to sing again.
I let the dogs out, and the bigger one ran right to the fence post where the hawk had been.
She whimpered.
She knew.
We had been visited by immensity.

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