In March, the lake is flat white at the foot of the dam.
The only water moving slips over the spillway, sliding
through a day silver in every direction, and splashes
through the only open bit of black water beneath the flow.
Something moves on the ice. Through binoculars, I see
the dark lumps scattered across the ice are fish, tumbled
over the lip into the light. Darker shapes crouched near
are bald eagles. I count five and wish I was closer.
The beaks and claws are beyond the power of the glass,
and white heads fade into snow, the winter, and the day.
We chatter and fidget, struggling for a better view. Then,
Veronica points to the sole tree on a ridge near us. Bare
of leaves, the limbs are thick with dark shapes. I change
focus, and the tree is crowded with eagles. We all count
them, and each announces a different number. I report
twenty-three. We huddle by the frozen lake, breath
visible, vision fogged, wordless now, as a convocation
of eagles hunkers under the thin sun of the season, cranky
and solemn, working through winter one fish at a time.
This poem first appeared in Earth First! (2014).
—
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of eight volumes of poetry, most recently Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. Others include Even Further West; A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; and Portable Planet. More than 650 individual poems appear in over 300 reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, India, Iran, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. Shaffer lives on Oʻahu with his magnificent other Veronica and a delightful little dog named Kona.
