Ode the Blackriver Eagle

"Bird
most pure,
I knew you alive,
electric,
excited,
murmurous,
a fragrant
arrow
your body was."
                                      – Neruda, from "Ode to the Yellow Bird"



All the other wings
have left,
lifted over
the coming draft,
that pain
of ice,
eyes that thin,
for the southern
winds,
where they might
drift down
along ancient
soothing corridors
to land among
the warm
waters of the Caribbean.
Yet not
for the Blackriver
bald eagle,
her talons
still cling
to the leafless willow
her eyes creased,
stones of vision
cast out over
the windy chop
of the slowly
freezing bay
for fish who
wander, secure
in their blindness,
the surface
for the last
of the circling
insects.

We wander
together now.
The white ice will come.
Long crystals
will hide the fish.
The teetering
willow cannot
guard the cupped
sticks
of the feather
blanketed nest
and we wonder
all winter
what comes
of the skin
of your neck,
that thick scarf
of white?
Men will plunge
holes in the ice
but leave
little
of their catch.
In among the backwaters
mice might
scuttle through
cold tunnels
against the crisp
towers
of big bluestem
cringing
in the wind,
yet that is less.
What inside
the mind
knew there would
be open water
along
the Blackriver?
Mind and river
merge
to think nothing
but rocky
banks
where I've
seen you wait,
a slight
rising of wing,
hard as statue
taking time
the wind
up its winding column
then, an arrow,
silver light,
take an offering
under the February
water made
yellow by a faraway
sun.