Just a shape at first, wide and blank, merging with my own dark outline on the road, the shadow of a hawk passes over my shoulder, so suddenly I flinch, I start, as if some unexpected hand has touched my actual body.
But gently, without a sound.
Seeming to dissolve then and rise, becoming three-dimensional: a sparrowhawk, golden, gliding just before me along the curve, a single feathered muscle pushing off finally above the fields, behind it, in the delicate sky, bulging in air, as huge and sudden as a world, the afternoon moon.
from Light When It Comes (Eerdmans 2016)