I stand on the footbridge
basking in a quiet broken only
by the unexpected splash of a leaping fish.
On the east bank a guy with a fishing pole
lazily tosses his line, waits.
In the distance, a silhouetted
leafless tree. A large rounded lump
hunched on a high branch catches my eye,
stirs a little. An owl? A hawk?
I raise my field glasses, focus. No longer a lump,
it stretches a slender neck, lifts a long bill.
I glance back at the fisherman, again at the tree.
The bird is gone,
then returns, spreads its immense ribbed wings,
drying them in the sun—a cormorant,
back from a dive for lunch. This is what
I have been starved for, this feeds my soul.
—
Poet Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Among the anthologies and journals in which her poetry has appeared are: Feral, The Widows’ Handbook, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Peacock Journal, Wordpeace, New Verse News, Portside, Your Daily Poem. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Best of the Net and Bettering American Poetry anthologies.
