I Am the Eagle
(Bald Eagle)
I could not seem to work on this painting without hearing from somewhere in the back of my mind the resonate chords of John Denver’s 12-string guitar and his first pure, crescendoing, sustained note that bursts into the first stanza of the song, “The Eagle and the Hawk.”
I am the eagle, I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky.
It simply defines this work for me. His melody and harmonies play on my senses in the very same way that I’m struck every time I see an eagle in flight. I never tire of it.
Beyond those first words, the lyrics veer to a line about the hawk presaged in the title, a bird somehow bloodied, which has always left me confused. Digging deeper recently, I found that Denver wrote the song as a theme for a documentary that was being made about, yes, an eagle and a hawk. The documentary never aired but Denver, liking the theme, included it in his album, Aerie.
The song ends with Denver’s soaring optimism that we can all grow better than we are.