Webcam Osprey
“Osprey has laid an egg!”
Electronic marquee outside a restaurant
Is there no dignity left? Bad enough they
have watched me all winter: hunkering down
in the cold and wind, surveying my flat stretch
of tidewater where I know the rhythms of each run, building
the nest for our family. (How lucky the camera can’t follow the flight
of love, the moment we seal our future.) And now, just
in time for tourist season, my body unwittingly becomes
a performer while they sit at the bar
or table, even those without a water view, waiting
for their lobster, the staff laconic in the slow
early spring season and all watching
my sacred offering, an event
they can talk about
on their cell phones or perhaps even
send a picture of the picture on the screen
above the decorator fishing net.
And when the little one finally breaks
through to this world, a moment that should be
ours, only ours, how will I explain the world
he is breaking into? How can I tell him -- free-born spirit expecting
his birthright -- that he is already captured?
(Previously published in Off the Coast.)
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