Art & Poetry Series: 4 Great Blues, Great Blue; Caw-Caw-Caw, Luster; Osprey with Mackerel, Ode to an Osprey; Northern Saw-Whet Owl, Saw-Whet Owl; Dark Angels, Shags and Solitude
By Leslie Moore
4 Great Blues
Great Blue
Ardea herodias
The heron lifts off
its granite pedestal
with primordial
grandeur,
a pterodactyl
come back
to life.
Ponderous
but aloft,
it skims the bay
with giant
wingbeats,
head tucked,
neck coiled,
legs trailing.
I too want
to rise from
this rocky shore,
redeemed,
and flap into
the great blue
beyond.
Caw-Caw-Caw
Luster
Corvus brachyrhynchos
When she comes in
for a landing,
tail fanned,
a bright band of white
bisects black feathers.
When she takes off,
the flight feathers
in her wings
flash ivory.
It’s not the glance
of sunlight off
ebony plumes.
Not the iridescence
of pitch-dark feathering
collecting and reflecting
the colors of the sky–
indigo, lavender, pearl.
She’s not a white-collared crow
blown hither from South Africa
in a cross-Atlantic gale.
No, this piebald crow
is an exotic. She flocks
with common crows
in City Park, zebra striped
in the melanin-rich murder,
an undreamed bird
in a familiar landscape.
Osprey with Mackerel
Ode to an Osprey
Ossifragus, bone-breaker
Oh to be so far sighted
as to see what I want
from aloft–
a glint in bright waters.
Oh to be so bold
as to fold my wings
into free fall—
no hesitation, no doubts.
To be chillingly exact,
raising my wings,
lifting my legs,
in the last breath.
Deft enough
to rake the surface
with sharp, hooked claws,
barbed pads on the soles of my feet.
To sweep
what I’m after
right out of the water
and then rise
on wild downbeats,
shimmy my load
into alignment—
head first, no drag.
Oh to wing
back to my eyrie,
catch clinched
in steel talons.
Northern Saw-Whet Owl
Saw-Whet Owl
Aegolius acadicus
So small he makes two meals
of a field mouse, yet his
beeeep
beeeep
beeeep
like an 18-wheeler backing up
carries for half a mile.
Once I heard one call
from a cabin on the coast
and it sounded like the hiss
of a radiator releasing steam
only the cabin had no radiator
no electricity
no running water
only candles and kerosene lamps
rain barrels under downspouts
an outhouse
and a tiny saw-whet owl saying
tssssssst
tssssssst
tssssssst
from a white pine
in response to her mate.
Dark Angels*
Shags and Solitude
Cormorant, corvus marinus, “sea raven”
17 shags balance on the high wire that spans
the Passagassawakeag at the Narrows
where the Upper Bridge used to be.
They shuffle flat webbed feet, better suited
to swimming than perching, teeter,
face downriver, beaks tilted into the breeze.
Some preen feathers with hooked bills.
Others hang inky wings out to dry. They croak
companionably. Shit milky streams of guano.
A mile upriver, on a quiet inlet, a lone shag
straddles a dead limb over the water.
Maybe the others were mean to him, Tom says.
We chuckle, but I want to stand with this bird.
Escape the crowd, its glib camaraderie.
Let my thoughts slow to the flow of the river.
*Dark Angels has previously appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Cafe Review.