"Those Eyes In Their Helmet"

I was returning from shooting macro down the field. As I approached my disused propagating house I heard flapping. A young male sparrowhawk had entered through the open door and couldn't find his way out again. (Extras)

I didn't go in but tried to coax him towards the door from outside. It wasn't working, he kept flying against the glass and was getting increasingly stressed. I opened the vents wide but that didn't make any difference.

I've seen a sparrowhawk turn a pigeon into a pillow fight so was a bit cautious about entering but truth to tell, the poor bird was much more frightened of me than me him. He went between the glass and the shade netting. I grabbed him by the base of the tail and took him outside. I then threw him as hard as I could up into the sky as my father had showed me when I was a child. My heart leapt when he soared up and away. What a privilege to have had a close encounter with such a beautiful, completely wild and free bird of prey.

I haven't given a lot of thought to today's poem from my Poem For The Day Two book but I've read Sparrow Hawk by Ted Hughes repeatedly.

A Sparrow Hawk
Slips from your eye-corner – overtaking
Your First thought.
Through your mulling gaze over haphazard earth
The sun’s cooled carbon wing
Whets the eyebeam.
Those eyes in their helmet
Still wired direct
To the nuclear core – they’re alone
Laser the lark-shaped hole
In the lark’s song.
You find the fallen spurs, among soft ashes.
And maybe you find him
Materialized by twilight and dew
Still as a listener –
The warrior
Blue shoulder-cloak wrapped about him
Learning, hunched,
Among the oaks of harp.


As for today's poem from The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot. http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html my book includes only three verses. The line, "Like a patient etherised upon a table" jumped off the page to me. I have a vivid memory of being taken as a young child to the hospital where I was born for a medical procedure. I'm not sure sure what was wrong with me. Maybe it was something to do with my teeth. The table I was on was curtained off in bright green.  I remember a sort of sieve being put over my face. I suppose ether was still used in the fifties.