"THE OSPREYS ARE DOING BETTER"

I do not need to be told that

the ospreys are doing better

 

Do not need to read it on my feed

 

Do not have to see it in a magazine and

feel the joy rising under

a cramped ceiling, do not have to

feel the lift from the bulk of my chair.

 

I have seen the osprey cruising between 

endless seas of sky and

skies of sea

 

Always flying north 

or south tracing the lines

of waves

 

I have not just seen the osprey today.

I have seen it enough to know things.

 

Enough to stare into an 

empty patch of blue 

and know just where to see it–just where to

plot the point with my dark pencil on a graph

Of clouds

 

It’s claws hold a silver fish

reflecting all the light of the day–

the full sun and ocean of water

in a beam.

 

The osprey has taken me

on rides, lifting me so high

that we have looked together through

our mask over the apex

of our beak at the small 

people below

scattering the beach in

the colors of a seaglass 

collector’s dream.  

 

Some look up and see a bird, 

Some a gull, 

Some even a great black-backed gull,

But not me.

 

I see an osprey.