mentioned in its title as a symbol. The mere fact that Dunn spends so much time,
effort, and space describing the bird suggests that he is doing more than writing about
one particular hawk. Like many lyric poets, Dunn seems to be focusing on this particular
bird as a symbol of something (or some things) other than itself. Now the question is
“what might the hawk symbolize”? The poem provides various clues.
·
The hawk may partially symbolize the unpredictable and dangerous nature of life, as its
crash into the speaker’s window suggests (4-7).
· The hawk may
partially symbolize the resilience of living things and their natural yearning for
freedom and independence, since the hawk,
. . .
not dead, got up
dazed, and in minutes was gone.
(8-9)
· The hawk may
partially symbolize the distinctions between humans and nature, since the speaker
proclaims of the hawk that “this is its sky, this is its woods”
(11).
· The hawk may partially symbolize the fact that creatures which
seem, in some senses, beautiful and admirable nevertheless obey natural instincts, such
as the instinct to kill and eat smaller creatures, as when the speaker mentions “The
tasty small birds it [that is, the hawk] loves” (12).
· The hawk and
its relation to the small birds may partially symbolize humans and their relations to
God or to the powers that massively affect their lives, as when the speaker says that
the small birds
have seen their God and
know
the suddenness of such love
as we know lightning or flash
flood. (13-15)
In short, the hawk
may plausibly symbolize many different meanings, and lines such as the ones just quoted
seem to justify regarding the hawk as symbolic. In these lines, after all, the speaker
himself invites us to regard the hawk in symbolic terms, and the same can be said of the
poem as a whole.
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