Eagle Affirmation

You’ve got to understand that sighting the pair

of eagles over the block, right over our house,

not more than twenty feet above the roof,

so massive their wings pull at the corrugated

tin sheeting even with gentlest tilt, counteracts

bitterness against all the damage I see and hear

around me on an exclusively crisp blue morning,

when clarity is pain and even one small missing

wattle tree, entirely vanquished since I was last here

at home—I still find this hard to say—is agony;

a region is not a pinpoint and a different compass

works in my head, having magnetics for all

directions and all pointing to one spot

I know and observe as closely as possible;

and even one small vanished or vanquished

wattle tree is agony close to death for me,

where I find it hard to breathe to feed myself

to get past the loss; but the pair of eagles

still appearing and keeping their sharp

and scrupulous eyes honed, overrides

this ordeal, though I wish their victims

life too and their damage is traumatic

as anything else; that’s as much sense

or nonsense as I can make in such blue light.