"My fourth eagle was a gathering of them
at the Conowingo Dam near the spot
where the Susquehanna River empties into the Chesapeake
Bay.
While I didn't see nests, I assume they were there.
December is prime nest-building period for eagles, huge ones
up to 13 feet deep and 8 feet wide, weighing more than a ton.
That's the size in my neighborhood
of an average garden shed filled with stuff.
Instead, I saw more than a dozen eagles
hanging out on rocks in the water, settling in trees,
stretching their wings, resting and sunning themselves
on transmission towers sunk into the river,
not at all the singular creatures I've always
known them to be, pictured flat as they are
in so many heraldic portraits.
Poland's double-headed eagle always
looked like a flayed market chicken.
And pinioned on the quarter, our eagle's legs
are strangely squat.
Its broad chest pectoraled and unnervingly human.
In fact, if you cover its wings with your thumbs,
the bird looks like a tiny cartoon prizefighter.
Unlike the black vultures, elegant flyers
who coast on thermals, eagles flap a lot and land heavily
on sturdy branches.
A few times a day, fish get caught in the turbines
and sucked through the dam.
So the eagles pluck all they want from the water
and hardly have to leave their rocks.
They were, to me, many things--
bigger than I remembered, more wary than the vultures
who perched on low branches and regarded us mildly.
Mostly though, they weren't ferocious, just
quietly waiting in the sun, that unseasonably warm day.
Close up, their beaks were more rounded
than hooked, their legs tufted and softer, their brows
less heavy, and mussed rather than stern.
Maybe because it was so warm that day
and the breezes so gentle, their eyes
were a sunny polleny yellow.
With my binoculars, I could see the scales on their talons.
Some muddy or brown with fish guts, some wet and shining.
If I went in closer still, I'd see
the mites that gather under their wings,
commensal scavengers feeding on scaly skin debris
and bits of feather, fungi, and algae.
In whatever way, eagles have seemed stand-offish--
these were changed.
These stretched and scratched and breathed.
Proximity can turn a symbol into a bird again.
When I look at a bird, any bird, grackle, robin, the dailies,
the crowd birds, dun sparrows, gulls, cardinals.
I feel the weight in my hands as if given a lump of clay,
the pull toward the pointed beak and the tapering tail,
the rounded head, the fat dip of belly, the lines
of younger birds-- lighter, leaner.
Sandpipers are the lightest of all, outrunning the waves,
then fast-turning back as the water
recedes, their legs a blur.
Bodies, the gray white of an incandescent bulb, a modeling
of shore and clouds before rain, lighter even
than a hummingbird.
Though the ruby-throated hovers and stills in midair, 50 wing
beats a second, its crown of emeralds,
its bright, gemmed necklace weighted with extravagance
to Earth.
But these are my impressions, not necessarily what
you'd choose if you were sculpting
state motto birds, birds for stamps and banners and seals.
Anyway, neither one-- the skittery, the bobbly,
ever had a shot at representing our country.
My final eagle began as a blank, as no eagle at all.
Visiting the county dump where I thought I might find some
turned up instead a lot of hawks.
I drove in and passed the lines for garden trash, bulk trash,
and household items and parked near the dump sites
where I got out and walked around.
I saw no eagles, but could hold the hawks
in the tondo of my binocular's lens
and follow their flight against a very blue sky
with high, firm, white clouds, until they
turn to dark v's, back lit by bright sun in the west.
The buzzards who so gently tip into wind while looking down,
the swallows skimming the dunes, the mockingbirds, grackles,
red-winged blackbirds, all moved in and out of sight.
It was quiet up on the hill where the big bulldozers were
parked and the County keeps cement barriers and linings
for sewers and pyramids of pipes and barrels.
I could see the quarry and mulch pit from there.
And all around the pear trees were in bloom.
In the grass, not yet high, I surprised
a woodchuck who, in turn, surprised me and exploded
like a brown geyser, and then ran off fast,
its heavy, loose pelt sliding over its back.
Pelt-- the word surprised me, just as much.
Not a word I find occasion to use, but thinking it
suggested a body's architecture, the way
a friend described his experience of Lascaux,
as if the animals were drawn by one who understood as a hunter
or creator would how bones hinged and moved
inside the animals.
There is a peace to the far clanking and grinding below,
muffled by low, grassy hills and flocks singing.
And when the machines rested, a summery
quiet rising, reinstating for a few seconds, rich and warm
and buzzing, until things powered up and roared again.
No eagles.
But now that I've seen some, the thought of one,
where it might have been, the thought of it whole and unto
itself made for me a ghost bird, an after-image or a presaging.
How can I know what might come to fill
this space once I'm gone?
A very real bird there, somewhere, not
threaten-- protected.
Not dosed out in parts, not embossed,
not marked on a personal checklist,
not derided or rescued, not laden,
not burdened with the burdens of a nation.
Just yesterday, after reading about two eagles tangled
in combat and crashing to Earth at an airport in Minnesota,
I walked out, expecting-- what?
A sign?
There wasn't an eagle on our block that morning.
And likely, there won't be here in Baltimore.
But a sensation, a space in the air, in eagle form.
It's hard to explain what it felt like--
lit, present, ripe.
What was that?
Consider the shape of a thought, unbound,
bound for a moment in the shape of a bird framed as an eagle.
Then, let it mean--
not rain, not luck, or luck's opposite,
not a stranger's arrival or the promise of riches.
To see an eagle and not a symbol,
you'd have to stop wanting the bird to mean.
Such an empty, bright, high-domed sky--
put an eagle in it, a scrap, a dot, a spot on sun,
smudge in air moving fast out of sight,
or looping in close, its sharp black
and sharp white returning, gone behind trees and back again.
Give it desires, its own.
What are they?
Would an eagle want most from a day?"
[APPLAUSE]
First line.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]