Thought

Sunrise: Fog: Bald Eagle
South Lubec, Maine

 Thought

If the gods bring you

a strange and frightening creature,

accept the gift

                                                                Each Moment a White Bull Steps

                                                                Shining into the World

                                                                Jane Hirshfield

But then, if we understood

or tired to or even wanted

to, the birds that

our thoughts are, how often

unlike a pile-driver, or should

be, how flight

is what they require

to live, to flit

from post to post, even

the top, capped to keep the gulls

from resting their bum,

or the crows, harassing

the nesting hawks, the eagles… still,

to see that fledgling sit

facing the sun all day

(and not far away those

crows, squawking their cacophony

of angsted delight), from far

he (she?) seemed to me

a spruce branch rooted,

posted guard,

while there’s herring

while there are humpbacks

while his (her?) mum

hovers over then clutches
her own: a birch

for her, not far but down

the road, and too a hooded gaze,
her brain taking it all,

everything in. 

And it is that eagles take it,

or hummingbirds, their long

proboscis almost seeming

to ravage 

the blossom if wasn't for
the blossom 

opening for it,
welcoming to make

more and more

nectar, not regretting

herself when she lost, slowly

if the weather’s good, all

desirability (but they’ll be
beetles wings later, right,
when she droops

too low on her stalk,
to caress her  

to anything limply needed). 

I haven’t gone

far, have I?  I thought

maybe to get, at least,

to the end

of the lane before the bird
fledged, I wanted

to be able to stand

beneath the tree, to be

standing beneath all that

waiting, all that serenity…

but the limb was abandoned,
forsaken

when I finally made it

and even a feather, after all  

that grooming, drifted too far

away to be enamored with
and cherished: the tall
cordgrass, toward the saltmarsh,

or and I just noticed,
I'd missed it all this time
sitting there,

the snowshoe hare—I thought:
how had it lived, hidden
in the rugosa

outwitting four
eagles, 

all these weeks?