The Last Golden Eagle #Haibun

I’ve felt a special affinity with birds of prey since I was a teenager. I identified with them as solitary hill-loving creatures like me, who haunted the heights of my beloved Lake District. I saw many buzzards and kestrels, a mating pair of ospreys and even a peregrine falcon once, but never the Golden Eagle.

He was the last survivor of his line, a family of Golden Eagles who came to Haweswater from Scotland in the 1950s. His mate died in 2004, and every spring he would circle in a breathtaking display formation above the straits of Riggindale, hoping to attract a mate who tragically would never come.

I walked there several times hoping to see him, coming very close once, as a band of walkers told me I had just missed his display flight. I moved away from the area in 2009. Today I found out that this majestic and ill-fated bird made his last flight in 2015. I never did get to see him and I wonder if Golden Eagles will ever return to haunt these heights again.

alone for so long
fled now to the sky we face
springtime without you

Written for dVerse

Tonight, Frank is hosting, and has asked us to write a haibun about eagles:

Let’s write our haibun that references the Eagle, in whatever context I’ve mentioned, or that you conceive. For those new to haibun, the form consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated.