The Longing of Eagles

No words can tell what they feel, how

mated for life they breed once a year

and no one calls it love, what preening

they do in the last light at dusk,

done for the good of the nest—pure, habitual,

the sweet uncomplicated essence of instinct.

No gestures pass between them, no eloquent eye

belies a hunger not born of bad fishing,

and the annual surviving offspring blinks once

at its dead nestmate, kicked over the edge and gone.

I do not envy their flights, not climb

or dive or the hover in a hard wind,

outrigger wings gone quiveringly tense.

I do not envy what we call their play,

the swoops and feints, the talons-locked

free-fall tumble in the sun of a false spring.

I do not envy their beauty, nor the keen eye

of the ornithologist, who can tell them apart.

I do not envy the air they fly through,

nor the waters that sustain them,

nor the darkness that once made of them

something rare. I do not envy their dignity.

For two weeks now I have watched a single eagle

troll the canyon, and this morning

I found its mate, talons and tail feathers removed,

a filthy hulk. I do not know if it is male or female,

but I would bet every word I love, the shot

that felled it was fired by a man. I wonder,

as he bent to his work—the hard jerks

at the feathers, the unsheathed hatchet