When poet EmilyJane Mockett and her photographer husband Phil Hutcherson from Bainbridge Island visited the Sculpture Forest, they were inspired by Greg Neal‘s “Attacking Eagle.”

“Both being artists and nature enthusiasts we were drawn in by the opportunity to commune with art in nature, and not knowing anything about it made the reveal for us all the more magical! The scale of trees forming shapes and spaces with the scale of most of the art was both stimulating & humbling—sensing wonder and smallness, familiarity with surprise, creating a beautiful tension of joy with humility.  Our encounter with the Attacking Eagle sculpture delivered a new sensation of playing with becoming prey, becoming part of the life cycle and the awe of our Aliveness within the whole interdependent complex web of all existence.”

From her experience, Emily wrote “Oh Bird of Prey!”:

(are you a hunter?)

Oh bird of prey!

With your precision of flight

Are you a hunter? With

Your eyes so sharp with insight

Oh bird of prey!

With your silent sweep

Are you a hunter? With

Your focus so piercingly deep

Oh eagle I love you/them

Especially in morning glance

Are you a hunter? Over

stillness of water’s abundance…

Osprey hunts, plucking with

absolute precision, your breakfast,

Then you Eagle, uninvited, unseen

join Osprey in arial dances

Oh bird of prey!

With awesome precision

An absolute of a different kind

Flying with gravity in defiance

Oh eagle I love you/them

In Nature’s abun-dance…I wonder

Who’s babies will get fed?

Who’s catch makes the hunter?

Oh eagle, my sky dancer,

You ARE a hunter, in pursuit

Of a partner, in your sky dance

Oh how you’ve already caught me!

….And on another morning

Dear Osprey it’s you who hunts me—

Who takes my heart soaring!

Blessed be the sacred diversity of Aliveness