Today, I caught competing
levels of the food chain sharing quiet communion
just beyond my church’s peeling walls.
A hawk, a crow, and a robin
perched atop burgeoning branches of the same budding
tree, their reflection no less pensive 
for lack of wafer and wine.
They bathed in the sweet hymn of rumbling engines and rustling
leaves, serene, 
unbothered by irrelevant labels like predator and prey.

I watched as the hawk swooped
from the branch, bespeckled feathers brilliant
in fledgling afternoon light, its flight gentle as a whispered prayer
that we could spurn our prejudices as easily as birds on a bough.